Leftcom - 1914-18: World War Ihttp://www.leftcom.org/es/articles/1914-18-world-war-i
esPoland: One Hundred Years of Bourgeois Dictatorshiphttp://www.leftcom.org/es/node/36368
<div class="field field-name-field-images field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="http://www.leftcom.org/files/100.jpg"><img src="http://www.leftcom.org/files/styles/galleryformatter_slide/public/100.jpg?itok=2VYo8zoJ" width="433" height="312" /></a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>
<em>Pictured: 1919 May Day demonstration in Płock, a city in central Poland, with banners reading “Long live the Councils of Worker’s Delegates” and calling for freedom for political prisoners.</em></p>
<p>Last year we wrote an article analysing the annual Independence March in Poland. [1] This year marks the centenary of Polish independence. The nationalist frenzy is already in full swing, hundreds of events big and small are expected to take place throughout the country, including festivals, lectures, exhibitions and competitions. Accompanying this, a minor commodities boom – flags, t-shirts and books, commemorative coins and medals, peddled left and right. Meanwhile, the far right is preparing another Independence March (despite a ban by the Mayor of Warsaw and the President announcing a surrogate state-approved march).</p>
<p>But in 1918 the future of Poland, and the whole of Europe, was far from certain – the spectre of social revolution hung heavy in the air. In the aftermath of revolutions in the Russian, German and Austro-Hungarian empires, states collapsed only to be reborn in new national colours. From 1917 the international working class was increasingly conscious of the need to find their own answer to the imperialist mayhem. Inspired by the events in Russia, workers’ councils spread throughout Europe, powerful strikes and demonstrations gave voice to those ignored by history. Workers’ councils were likewise established in Polish towns and villages. [2] The more class conscious of these began to self-organise everyday life and challenge the power of the reconstructed Polish state. Divisions between socialists of the Polish Socialist Party (PPS) and the communists of the Communist Workers’ Party of Poland (KPRP) reached their zenith, as the former steered the councils to compromise with the nascent Polish state, while the latter, in the tradition of Ludwik Waryński and Rosa Luxemburg, anticipated a final showdown with the Polish bourgeoisie.</p>
<p>By 1920 the workers&#39; struggle in Poland was smashed by repression and sabotage, with thousands of workers and communists in prison. Year by year the international situation was becoming increasingly bleak. Failed uprisings in Germany, Hungary, Finland and Bulgaria, the rise of fascism in Italy, and the Kronstadt rebellion (which shone light on the increasingly desperate situation within Soviet Russia). By the mid-20s, as the prospect of revolution drifted away, the KPRP itself lost sight of the revolutionary programme, embracing parliamentarianism, the need for an independent Poland – it began to follow blindly every directive from Moscow until 1938 when the party was simply dissolved by Stalin and its militants murdered on a mass scale.</p>
<p>If the existence of the KPRP was short-lived, then so was Polish independence. In September 1939 Poland was invaded by Nazi Germany from the west and the USSR from the east. Another brutal imperialist war followed with millions dead. The occupation of Poland came to an end in 1945 when the state was recreated with its boundaries shifted westwards to suit its new Moscow-based imperialist overlords. It remained under the dominion of the USSR until 1989, when the Eastern Bloc collapsed. Since then Poland has “re-entered” the west, joining NATO in 1999, and the European Union in 2004. Polish independence has turned out to be a utopian dream – it could not and cannot exist without an alliance with one or another imperialist power in exchange for financial and military support. That harsh reality applies equally to all the other new "nation states" that have appeared in the last 100 years. The early KPRP fully grasped the crucial distinction between the struggle for proletarian power and the redivision of the world between local bourgeoisies.</p>
<p>For this centenary we have translated the following agitational leaflet distributed in Warsaw by the KPRP on the first anniversary of Polish independence. It was written at a time when communism meant true internationalism and working class self-organisation – not siding with this or that imperialist power, or falling for parliamentary cretinism. The KPRP, like the other parties of the Communist International, gradually degenerated over the 1920s to become tools of the Russian state. We have previously written about this process [3] as well as the fight of the Polish Communist Left to keep the revolutionary programme alive. [4] But in 1919 the party was crystal clear on this, there were only two options: an independent Polish state, with the bourgeoisie on top, or the power of the Workers’ Councils, with the working class taking its future into its own hands.</p>
<p>By now it should be obvious that Polish independence did not solve the national question, let alone the social question. Not only that, many of the problems raised by the leaflet remain ever relevant. Profiteering, corruption, attacks on workers’ and human rights, evictions, nationalist hatred and chauvinism, are all ripe in the Poland of today. History has shown those socialists who promised national liberation would deliver socialism to be wrong. [5] The Polish nationalism of today is a direct continuation and consequence of the nationalism which crushed the workers’ movement in years 1918-23.</p>
<h2>One Year of Bourgeois Dictatorship</h2>
<p>Worker comrades!</p>
<p>A year has passed since the day when, upon the ruins of the Central Powers razed by the Revolution, an Independent Polish Republic was born. It is time to look back on the past year, <strong>it is time to consider what this year of state independence has given to the working class.</strong></p>
<p>One year ago the bloody thrones of Wilhelm and Charles turned to dust. [6] The great working masses in Germany and Austria began their assault – with them, the proletariat of Poland. The threat of annihilation hung over the capitalist world. The Polish bourgeoisie, terrified, put power into the hands of social-patriots – the former <em>frak</em> Piłsudski stands at the head of the state, <em>frak</em> Moraczewski stands at the head of the “People’s” Government. [7]</p>
<p>What illusion, what hope, lived within the wide unconscious Polish masses. Independence achieved and “socialists” at the head of the state – it seemed as if finally the ancient chains at the hands and feet of the working class are falling off – there, the Polish working masses have in front of them an open road to Socialism!</p>
<p>But not long did these illusions last. Barely did the working class manage to draw a breath, barely did it make the first steps towards organising itself, barely did it head out into the first skirmish against capital – and already it turned out that the “People’s” Government of “socialists” from the PPS works hand in hand with the bourgeoisie, that with all its might it defends class rule, that it opposes the struggle of the working class for emancipation and instead wants to put it back in the chains of old servitude.</p>
<p>You workers remember the first weeks of “independence”. You remember how the “People’s” Government supported and made it easier for the bourgeoisie to organise itself – how it hindered and made it more difficult for the proletariat to organise itself.</p>
<p>You comrades remember the despicable violations of the gendarmerie in the “liberated people’s Poland”. The raids on workers’ locals, the arrests, the torture of conscious workers, all carried out with impunity. You will remember the bloody massacre of the workers’ demonstration on 29 December. [8] You will remember the treacherous assassination of emissaries from the Red Cross of the Russian Socialist Republic, and then dozens of other unpunished murders in the notorious “Łapy”. [9]</p>
<p>But all these crimes, carried out with the permission and cooperation of the “People’s” Government, against the working class of Poland, against the revolutionary cause of Poland – all these violations were only to be the preface to the increasingly shameless economy of the bourgeoisie in the country.</p>
<p>The “People’s” Government, the government of <em>frak</em> traitors, which came down on the fighting working class with such a heavy hand, which did not step back after the suspension of martial law in Warsaw, which effectively brought back those arduous articles of the Tsarist penal code, showed incredible meekness and gentleness towards the bourgeoisie. It did not dare cut short the arbitrary will of the gendarmerie, it did not dare stand against the rampant profiteering, it did not dare encroach on the privileges of the propertied classes. It responded to the monetary boycott, the bourgeoisie’s sabotage, with pathetic whining and crying, it responded to the bourgeois takeover with shameful cowardly capitulation, voluntarily handing power into the hands of the bourgeoisie.</p>
<p>And from this point onwards begins the second stage of the “independence” of the Polish state. There begins the period of unmasked, unrestrained bourgeois counter-revolution. The bourgeoisie takes power – the <em>frak</em> traitors are reduced to the role of obedient lackeys and allies of reaction.</p>
<p>Workers, the things you were promised when the Tsarist government and the occupation was to be finally replaced with a patriotic “national” government of Poland. The things you were promised after winning “independence” - when they wanted to mislead you with the fraudulent delusion of parliamentary elections!</p>
<p>You were promised liberty – freedom to organise, freedom of press, freedom to strike. Was there ever a time when proletarian organisations – from the smallest factory committees to the Councils of Worker’s Delegates – were being driven as much into the underground? Were the prisons ever so full of militants of the workers’ cause? Was there ever a time when the truly revolutionary press was so gagged? Was there ever a time when the bourgeoisie and its government organised itself so fiercely against every strike, every workers’ action? It is sufficient to mention the miner’s strikes in the Dąbrowa Basin, the railway strike in Warsaw, the strike of workers in military factories, the walk outs of workers in public works, and finally the recently violently suppressed strike of agricultural workers! Did the Tsarist butchers or Wilhelm’s bandits ever terrorise the working class so flagrantly, as our native gendarmerie and police drones do today! Was it ever so easy, as today, to spill workers’ blood?</p>
<p>You were promised peace – peaceful coexistence with other nations. And here for a year now we have the most despicable of wars – war with the Russian Proletarian Republic. The flower of the working population of Polish towns and villages has to go to the front, under the command of hooligan officers and generals – to die there for the cause of landowners and capitalists, to kill its worker and peasant brothers of Russia, Belarus, Lithuania and Ukraine, who want nothing more than to emancipate themselves from the yoke of exploitation, to live in a brotherly alliance with the emancipated masses of all other countries! The Polish peasant and worker, shackled into the chains of soldiers’ discipline, is condemned to Cain’s lot, must swell from hunger and freeze in trenches, when the officers shirk at the back, and lead an indulgent lifestyle in the capital! And not only does there seem to be no end to this criminal war – despite multiple peace proposals from workers’ Russia – but the Polish bourgeoisie is constantly trying to instigate new wars. Because only through this national hatred, only through chauvinist incitement, can the propertied classes still live – this hatred between nations is the most effective poison which stupefies the masses and perpetuates the domination of capitalist exploiters.</p>
<p>You were promised fair and just courts – was the Tsarist or occupiers’ bureaucracy ever so shamelessly venal as the functionaries of the Polish state today? Was there ever so much bribery, corruption and thievery as within the offices of the state today?</p>
<p>You were promised the suppression of speculation – even at the worst period of occupation, was profiteering so audacious and unpunished as now? Were prices ever so inflated, and their inflation so tolerated and supported, as today under the government of our native bourgeoisie?</p>
<p>You were promised the regulation of provisions – was the provision crisis ever so prevalent under the occupation? The most necessary products are lacking completely – bread and meat, coal and clothing – whole cities are threatened with food shortage. And the government, which yesterday introduced confiscation of grain from landowners, today backs away and respects free trade, because the parliament of landowners and rich peasants has declared that it will not hand over grain for confiscation, because they need it as payslips! So let the broad working masses die of hunger, let whole cities perish – because the private property of profiteers, thieves and speculators is holy and untouchable!</p>
<p>You were promised the reopening of industry and jobs for the broad masses of the unemployed – was the disaster of unemployment ever more monstrous than now? Not only is there no question of reactivating the factories, but the government allows the factory owners to shut down the remaining ones, to force the workers into submission through hunger. Bah, the government itself serves as an example of this criminal activity – liquidating public works, condemning hundreds of thousands of workers to starvation. And instead of providing jobs, it introduces laws to send workers to France for hard labour, just like the occupiers’ government sent workers under the whip of German capital in the past!</p>
<p>After one year of independence for bourgeois Poland – after one year of bourgeois government the enslavement and misery of the working class is unprecedented – of never known before levels. At the same time, the splendour in which the band of landowners and bourgeois profiteers lives has reached unprecedented, revolting levels. They dictate the law in Poland today, they are the masters of life and death for the millions of proletarians. They command the government and the parliament. The government can condemn tens of thousands of workers to starvation – it will not take a penny from the earnings of the profiteers! The government can evict the poor proletarian families out onto the streets and requisition the locals of workers’ organisations – the houses of the bourgeoisie and the many places of its entertainment are holy and untouchable. The government can drive the workers’ organisations into the underground – but the capitalist profiteers, thieves and speculators can assemble and organise freely.</p>
<p>The Polish bourgeoisie listens humbly to only one master. In its own interest, it crawls on its belly in front of the united bourgeoisie of the Coalition. In it, the Polish propertied classes look for support against the Polish working class, in it they look for help in the fight against the bourgeoisie of Germany and other nations. The lowly crawl in front of the powerful bandits of the Coalition, the surrender of the country to the factual Franco-English occupation – that is the “independence” of the Polish bourgeoisie!</p>
<p>After the first year of existence of the independent bourgeois state, the Polish worker sees the shackles which “independence” has prepared for them. It could not be otherwise. <strong>Because bourgeois “independence” is the brutal dictatorship of the bourgeoisie over the proletariat.</strong></p>
<p>These traitors to socialism, the leaders of the Revolutionary Faction of the PPS, have served and are serving this foul and filthy bourgeois dictatorship. How many illusions have they sown among the masses – illusions for which today the proletariat has to pay for with the most bloody experience? What they did not promise to the workers after independence? What illusions did they spread about the “democratic” parliament – about the parliament which is, and cannot be anything other than, the headquarters of the bourgeois counter-revolution, blind, fierce and unthinking, incapable of even the slightest creative effort!</p>
<p>And even though the illusions burst relentlessly, for the <em>fraks</em> there is no coming back from the path of betrayal and compromise. In life and death, they have teamed up with the bourgeoisie – they are trying to save the rotten, stale, disintegrating edifice of the capitalist state. From within they paralyse all efforts of the working class, they betray and break up all mass action of the proletariat. The whole activity of the <em>fraks</em> – up to and including the recent agricultural strike – is one uninterrupted streak of betrayals. Together with the bourgeoisie, the <em>fraks</em> have declared fierce battle against the primary slogan of revolutionary battle – the slogan of proletarian dictatorship. Together with the entire bourgeoisie the <em>frak</em> party is condemned to inevitable destruction.</p>
<p>Because the working class cannot walk the way of the <em>frak</em> traitors. Naked reality speaks otherwise. <strong>Today, in the hour of the final battles, in the hour of the Social Revolution, there is no place for any intermediate “democratic” forms between the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and the dictatorship of the proletariat. Either bourgeois dictatorship – which we see today in Poland – in which case the working class must be tied in chains of slavery. Or the proletarian dictatorship – which means the ruthless shackling of the bourgeoisie, the bringing down of the old world of exploitation and destitution of the masses.</strong></p>
<p>The working class cannot hesitate – it has a clear path in front of it. <strong>To enter into deadly battle with capital, to throw off the disgusting shackles of slavery, to stand in line with the emancipated masses of the whole world and in brotherly alliance with them create a new world, a socialist world – that is the radiant task of the Polish proletariat, that is its historical destiny!</strong></p>
<p>Down with the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie!</p>
<p>Down with the social-patriotic compromise!</p>
<p>Long live the dictatorship of the proletariat!</p>
<p>Long live the Social Revolution!</p>
<p>Long live Socialism!</p>
<p>Warsaw Committee of the</p>
<p>Communist Workers’ Party of Poland</p>
<p>Warsaw, November 1919</p>
<p>Translation: <strong>Dyjbas</strong></p>
<p>[1] <a href="http://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2017-12-14/from-the-heart-of-darkness-anatomy-of-a-march-in-poland">leftcom.org</a></p>
<p>[2] <a href="https://libcom.org/history/interactive-map-workers-councils-1917-1927">libcom.org</a></p>
<p>[3] <a href="http://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2015-12-19/a-brief-history-of-the-communist-workers%E2%80%99-party-of-poland">leftcom.org</a></p>
<p>[4] <a href="http://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2016-12-28/who-were-the-grzechists">leftcom.org</a></p>
<p>[5] For more on the national question see: <a href="http://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2010-09-15/the-national-question-today-and-the-poisonous-legacy-of-the-counter-revolution">leftcom.org</a></p>
<p>[6] This refers to German Emperor Wilhelm II (1859-1941) and Charles I of Austria (1887-1922).</p>
<p>[7] <em>Frak</em> refers to a member of the Revolutionary Faction of the PPS. In the aftermath of the 1905 revolution the PPS split, with the <em>fraks</em> on one side and the PPS-Left on the other. The <em>fraks</em> prioritised national independence over socialist revolution. The <em>fraks</em> returned to the name PPS in 1909, while the PPS-Left merged with the SDKPiL to form the KPRP in 1918. Both the Chief of State Józef Piłsudski (1867-1935) and the first Prime Minister Jędrzej Moraczewski (1870-1944) belonged to the <em>fraks</em>.</p>
<p>[8] The demonstration in Warsaw on 29 December 1918 was called by the KPRP in protest against the arrest of the Red Cross emissaries and the state repression in the Dąbrowa Basin. The gendarmerie opened fire on the demonstration killing between three to ten participants (sources vary) and injuring many more.</p>
<p>[9] On 20 December 1918 five emissaries from the Red Cross of the Soviet Russia arrived in Warsaw to negotiate the repatriation of Russian POWs from Poland. They were interned, accused of being communist spies, put in prison and then expelled from the country. On 3 January 1919, as they were being escorted towards Soviet Russia, the Polish gendarmerie dragged the emissaries into a forest and murdered them. Four were killed on the spot, but Leon Alter (1889-1934) managed to escape. Although shot in the neck, he reached Minsk and revealed what had happened. The murder of the emissaries took place not far from the village Łapy, where just a few days later another Polish communist, Zbigniew Fabierkiewicz (1882-1919), was murdered by the gendarmerie.</p>
</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-authored field-type-datetime field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><span class="date-display-single">Thursday, November 8, 2018</span></div></div></div><div class="field-group-format group_tags field-group-div group-tags speed-fast effect-none"><div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-5 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/es/publications/documents">Documents</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-8 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/es/articles/proletarian-revolution">Proletarian revolution</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-10 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/es/articles/1914-18-world-war-i">1914-18: World War I</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-7 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/es/articles/nationalism">Nationalism</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-4 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/es/articles/russia-and-eastern-europe">Russia and Eastern Europe</a></div></div></div></div>Thu, 08 Nov 2018 11:38:15 +0000Dyjbas36368 at http://www.leftcom.orghttp://www.leftcom.org/es/node/36368#commentsLest We Forget: Workers Stopped Capitalism’s First World Warhttp://www.leftcom.org/es/node/36367
<div class="field field-name-field-images field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="http://www.leftcom.org/files/war%20over.jpg"><img src="http://www.leftcom.org/files/styles/galleryformatter_slide/public/war%20over.jpg?itok=I93QvH7m" width="500" height="269" /></a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>
The 100th anniversary of the Armistice, which we are told put a stop to the first world war, happens to coincide with remembrance Sunday, or Poppy Day. So we’re in for a treat. On top of poppy-wearing – now almost <em>de rigueur</em> – and two minute silences in the most improbable places, there are some smashing events in store. While local volunteers polish up war memorials, craft red poppy memorabilia, there are all sorts of state-sponsored celebrations, to mark the 11th hour of the eleventh day, in November 1918 when “the guns fell silent”.</p>
<p>You might be lucky enough to join a procession of 10,000 ‘ordinary people’ past the Cenotaph. Failing that, if you’re an early bird and live in one of the chosen towns, you’ll be able to enjoy the sound of a bagpipe playing the Battle’s O’er – “a traditional air played by pipers after a battle” – before dawn has broken. After dark more than 1,000 beacons will be lit and “bells in 1,000 churches and cathedrals will ring out in celebration of the end of the First World War”. And if these are not your cup of tea Danny Boyle (of 2012 Olympic ceremony fame) has designed a project where we can all join in. He’s come up with ‘Pages of the Sea’ where, at low tide on 11 November on multiple beaches, “giant portraits of casualties of the war will be carved by sand artists … while members of the public will be invited to create their own silhouettes in the sand of people important to them before the tide sweeps the beaches clean again.”. Possibly going beyond his official remit, Boyle told the <em>Daily Telegraph</em> he chose beaches because they are “dramatic, unruly, democratic” places where “nobody rules but the tide”.</p>
<p>We may add that beaches are also prone to pollution by bilge water from vessels that have taken on more than they can handle. Anyway, let’s get beyond the official bilge and set the record straight about how the war really ended.</p>
<p><strong>Beyond the Myth</strong></p>
<p>First, it’s not true that the “guns fell silent” on the morning of November 11th 1918 while Marshall Foch negotiated the Armistice with the German High Command. For various reasons, the fighting continued on many parts of the Western Front. It’s reckoned that over 10,000 men were killed, wounded or went missing on that day. A day like any other day, then, in a war which is now estimated (nobody really knows) to have mobilised about 70 million men, killing around 9-10 million of them and leaving over 35 million more wounded, imprisoned or ‘missing’.</p>
<p>But there’s an even bigger gap between fact and fiction, in this annual recital of a national myth. In reality, after the February 1917 revolution in Russia soldiers on both sides on the Western front were questioning what they were fighting for. Possibly the biggest Allied mutiny was by French soldiers in mid-1917 (involving 54 divisions and raising the cry of ‘peace or revolution’). Afterwards four British cavalry divisions were installed in France for the remainder of the war, with orders to “break strikes and anti-war agitation”. But that’s not part of the national myth, any more than acknowledging that, despite draconian punishments, including the death penalty, mutinies by British soldiers and sailors mounted each year to more than 13,000 in 1917.</p>
<p><strong>Working Class Revolution Ends the War</strong></p>
<p>By 1918 the working class on both sides had had enough. It was the political hold of the kings and emperors of the Central powers which collapsed first as the anger of mutinous troops and half-starved populations turned from demanding an end to the war to outright revolution. They were inspired by the Russian Revolution and Bolshevik calls for workers elsewhere to rise up and create a world soviet republic. Armistices had already been signed by Bulgaria, Turkey and Austria-Hungary before 11th November. It was only because the Allies wanted unambiguous surrender from Germany that the war continued. The delay only encouraged the formation of workers’ and soldiers’ councils throughout the land. ‘Kaiser Bill’ saw the writing on the wall and ran away to the Netherlands. Meanwhile the Social Democratic Party took over in Berlin and Philipp Scheidemann announced that Germany was henceforth a (parliamentary) republic before the councils could proclaim their own soviet republic. Working class uprisings had stopped the war between the ‘great powers’ before 11th November. Now the capitalists were more concerned to save their economic system based on profits produced by wage labour from communist revolution than to wage war with each other.</p>
<p><strong>The Class War After the War</strong></p>
<p>In April 1918 the Allies had invaded Russia in order to crush the revolution. This campaign continued after the Armistice. For them, defeating the revolutionaries threatening capitalism was now more important than the war against each other. Britain and France only withdrew from the Russian campaign in April 1919 because of the strikes and mutinies of soldiers and sailors, many of them sympathetic to Bolshevism and who refused to fight. In January 1919 a ‘strike’ at British army bases grew into a massive mutiny of more than 20,000 troops. With the support of locals, they took control of British army headquarters in Calais. General Byng was sent to put down the mutiny but his troops refused to fire and the army was forced to concede demands for improved conditions. Like the mutinous soldiers of the French Black Sea fleet, these troops were not going anywhere near Russia.</p>
<p>Within Britain the same issues were in play. There were no victories for the working class to celebrate. After the Armistice tens of thousands of battle-weary soldiers found themselves stuck in filthy barracks, still subject to harsh military discipline for months on end as they waited to be de-mobbed. This was one of the biggest causes of the frequent mutinies which occurred after the war, but it was by no means the only one. (Increasingly, soldiers and sailors resisted being used to put down ‘Bolshevism’.) One of the earliest mutinies occurred in January 1919 in Folkestone – where Danny Boyle’s crew will be tracing figures in the sand on 11th November – where two thousand troops refused to be herded back to France and led a procession of ten thousand or more through the town, cheered by the local population.</p>
<p>Lloyd George’s “land fit for heroes” was a long way from reality. The soldiers-just-out-of-uniform were returning to join a malnourished, poorly-housed, over-worked working class still facing severe food shortages, price hikes and bread rationing. Increasingly many would be without a job but as yet there was a revived militancy (even the police had been on strike in 1918) and belief in a better future within the working class as the optimism generated by the Russian Revolution held sway.</p>
<p>But the British state was more prepared to nip any move by workers than the working class was ready for socialist revolution. Aside from the military divisions ready to combat ‘domestic unrest’ (as in Glasgow in 1919) and the plans to introduce martial law and detain “suspected troublemakers” (as Sylvia Pankhurst was in October 1920) if necessary, British capital had a relatively sophisticated political system which it could adapt to pull the wool over working class eyes. Before the war was over, parliament had passed the Representation of the People Act to provide a democratic cover for the rule of capital. For the first time all men over 21 had the right to vote. The much-lauded ‘votes for women’ only applied to women over 30 who were graduates and/or whose husbands owned a certain amount of property. The hastily organised ‘Khaki election’ of December 1918 – long before most soldiers had returned home and after a short 3 week campaign mainly about war reparations, punishing Germany and repatriating enemy aliens – presented no social programme whatsoever.</p>
<p>Unsurprisingly there was a very low voter turnout, but it served Lloyd George’s scheme for a Liberal/Conservative coalition government and neatly kept the new democratic political debate on the same old ground of the class that had taken Britain into the war. On this national parliamentary ground there was no room for debate about a new communist society where the working class could exercise power via a network of directly-elected councils (or soviets) and manage production directly to meet social needs. Even before the Labour Party myth that state control of industry is a step towards socialism, the extension of the right to vote enabled Lloyd George’s Liberal/Conservative coalition to claim democratic legitimacy for the British capitalist state. It undermined (though did not extinguish) the natural sympathy of workers in Britain for the achievement of the Russian working class.</p>
<p><strong>The Lesson For Workers Today</strong></p>
<p>Britain in 2018 may seem a far cry from 1918, but on November 11th – when the last post has sounded, the beacons are lit and the sand drawings have been washed away – we would do well to remember that the war was an inter-imperialist one for aims that had nothing to do with the working class. It was the first in this epoch of global capitalism: when the cyclical economic crisis can only be resolved by the fight of the major powers to destroy each other’s economic base. In 1918 the United States benefited from the weakening of British imperialism. In 1945 the US emerged from another world war as the world’s supreme economic power. Today, as world capitalism faces yet another unsolvable crisis and the US is positioning to face off the competition from rising China, the prospect of trade wars eventually turning into real wars is again a reality. The last thing workers need to be doing is commemorate the slaughter of previous generations in what one first world war veteran – Harry Patch – poignantly described as no more than “organised murder”. More than ever, the only civilised prospect for humanity is for an end to capitalism and its class-divided society. As a starting point, we can only repeat, more than ever today: <strong>The only war worth fighting is the class war.</strong></p>
<p><strong>The above article is taken from the current edition (No. 45) of Aurora, bulletin of the Communist Workers’ Organisation.</strong></p>
</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-authored field-type-datetime field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><span class="date-display-single">Tuesday, November 6, 2018</span></div></div></div><div class="field-group-format group_tags field-group-div group-tags speed-fast effect-none"><div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-5 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/es/publications/aurora-en">Aurora (en)</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-8 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/es/articles/imperialism">Imperialism</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/es/articles/proletarian-revolution">Proletarian revolution</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-10 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/es/articles/1914-18-world-war-i">1914-18: World War I</a></div></div></div></div>Tue, 06 Nov 2018 14:31:19 +0000Dyjbas36367 at http://www.leftcom.orghttp://www.leftcom.org/es/node/36367#commentsThe Imperialist Hypocrisy Behind 11/11http://www.leftcom.org/es/node/34840
<div class="field field-name-field-images field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="http://www.leftcom.org/files/war%20to%20end%20war%20cartoonbig.jpg"><img src="http://www.leftcom.org/files/styles/galleryformatter_slide/public/war%20to%20end%20war%20cartoonbig.jpg?itok=Rarmaz4_" width="500" height="307" /></a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>
<strong>Lest we forget</strong></p>
<p><em>I am young, I am twenty years old; yet I know nothing of life but despair, death, fear, and fatuous superficiality cast over an abyss of sorrow. I see how peoples are set against one another, and in silence, unknowingly, foolishly, obediently, innocently slay one another.</em> (Remarque) [1]</p>
<p><em>Behind the wagon that we flung him in,</em></p>
<p><em>And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,</em></p>
<p><em>His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin,</em></p>
<p><em>If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood</em></p>
<p><em>Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs</em></p>
<p><em>Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud</em></p>
<p><em>Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,-</em></p>
<p><em>My friend, you would not tell with such high zest</em></p>
<p><em>To children ardent for some desperate glory,</em></p>
<p><em>The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est</em></p>
<p><em>Pro patria mori.</em> [2] (Owen) [3]</p>
<p>The obscenities that took place during the First World War were well recorded. Observers on both sides of the Western Front trenches and the countless other killing fields saw the reality of the bloodbath that the working-class and peasantry were dragged into – by ideological deception or the force of law.</p>
<p>The ruling class response was to counter the revulsion against War with resurrection of militarist mystification shrouded in patriotism - the “last refuge of the scoundrel” [4]. The truth is that the war was a direct result of capitalism in its imperialist phase. Nationalism was/is just its ideological cover.</p>
<p><em>Today the nation is but a cloak that covers imperialistic desires, a battle cry for imperialist rivalries, the last ideological measure with which the masses can be persuaded to play the role of cannon fodder in imperialistic wars.(Rosa Luxemburg)</em></p>
<p>The ideology has grown and developed into a solemn celebration of British imperialism – incorporating glorification of every British military action during the last hundred years and reaching its pinnacle each year around “Poppy Day”.</p>
<p><strong>British Imperialism confronted by the revolutionary wave</strong></p>
<p>The British bourgeoisie emerged as part of the winning alliance when the Armistice came into effect in November 1918 but they were confronted by the international Revolutionary wave that was already challenging the global capitalist order. The recognition of the challenge was exemplified when the King was persuaded that he would be foolish to allow his cousin, the deposed Tsar, to find refuge in Britain.</p>
<p>During May and June 1917 30,000 or more war-weary French soldiers in 54 divisions refused to fight. Inspired by the Russian Revolution, they called instead for “Peace or Revolution”. But less well-known are whole number of mutinies involving British soldiers that took place including major actions at Etaples and Boulogne late in 1917. These actions accelerated during 1918 and 1919.</p>
<p>One source summarises the situation in 1919 as follows - <em>In January 1919 there was a tidal wave of mutinies at Southwick, Folkestone, Dover, Osterley Park, Shortlands, Westerham Hill, Felixstowe, Grove Park, Shoreham, Briston, Aldershot, Kempton Park, Southampton, Maidstone, Blackpool, Park Royal, Chatham, Fairlop and Biggin Hill, as well as at several London railway stations where troops refused to embark for Russia and France.</em></p>
<p><a href="https://leftfootforward.org/2014/08/ww1-the-hidden-story-of-soliders-mutinies-strikes-and-riots/">On 3 January 1919, virtually the entire garrison at Folkestone refused to attend reveille in protest at poor food, excessive officer privileges and orders that they return to France. At a huge demonstration, 10,000-strong, the troops voted to form a Soldiers’ Union.</a></p>
<p>The link between the mutinies, strikes and the revolutionary wave became even clearer in the period immediately following the November 1918 Armistice. In 1919, in Kinmel Bay, North Wales, Canadian soldiers mutinied, demanding return to Canada and resisting any move to force them into the Imperialist interventions against Soviet Russia. Key players in the mutiny, subsequently murdered by the military, openly declared solidarity with proletarian revolution. In 1920, dockers in London refused to load the ship “Jolly George” with arms destined for the counter-revolutionary armies in Russia.</p>
<p>During the war there had also been an upsurge in class struggle in workplaces and working class communities. These moves were met by imprisonment of “leaders” and widespread repression by the British state.</p>
<p>Prominent in those attempts at state repression in favour of “the war effort” were Labour Party representatives such as Arthur Henderson, a Cabinet Minister in the coalition government. Henderson was far from unique amongst Labour politicians who were totally in favour of the war. For example, in Barrow, where strikes took place in the Munitions factories during 1916 and 1917, the strikes were opposed by the local Labour M.P., Charles Duncan.</p>
<p><em>Duncan</em> _was a senior figure in the Labour movement. He was from the North-east, had worked in an ordnance factory in Newcastle, and was a member of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers. He was also the first president of the Workers’ Union, which later merged into the Transport and General Workers’ Union. He was regarded as being in favour of the war. His nickname was the “Angel of Death” because he toured the country urging men to join up, and encouraging those who remained to do their duty to assist the troops._</p>
<blockquote class="remark"><p><a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/world-history/history-of-the-first-world-war-in-100-moments/a-history-of-the-first-world-war-in-100-moments-the-munitions-workers-who-made-the-british-9487877.html">independent.co.uk</a></p>
</blockquote>
<p>The Marxist understanding of Imperialism as period of ongoing bloodshed was immediately acted out by the British State after the Armistice. They made sure that the “guns did not fall silent”. As early as April 1919 the British Indian army opened fire on a mixed group of unarmed protestors and religious pilgrims in what became known Jallianwala Bagh or Amritsar Massacre. The Imperial authorities admitted to murdering 379 people while the Indian National Congress estimated the slaughter at around 1,000.</p>
<p>In Ireland, 1919 saw the start of two and a half years of brutally violent military actions by the British armed forces.</p>
<p>In Britain despite the repression, the experience of class struggle and organisation during the war flowed into further strikes and militant working class struggles around social conditions that continued into the 1920s. In common with moves across the world, in Britain many of the militants involved in the working class struggles that had taken place during the War rallied to the banner of the international revolution raised by the October revolution in Russia. Not so the British ruling class which invaded Russia in an attempt to safeguard its investments and overthrow soviet power. The British invasion was a bit of a fiasco and came to an end In 1920 soon after dockers refused to load the Jolly George with supplies bound for the forces of intervention. By 1921 it was clear that class struggle remained a “spectre that haunted the British bourgeoisie” [5].</p>
<p><strong>The bourgeois counter-offensive</strong></p>
<p>It was not until 1926 that the British State, with the active connivance of the Trades Unions leadership, was able to decisively defeat the working class during and after the General Strike. However, the ruling class had patiently prepared their assault on class militancy. Part of their ideological preparation was the boosting of ideas such as National Unity and patriotic duty. The developing “Pomp and Ceremony” around the annual minute’s silence on 11th November was part of that effort to destroy the working class’s consciousness of the possibility of a better world.</p>
<p>The origins of “Poppy Day” are part of that capitalist counter offensive. The reality that the War was ended amidst strikes, revolutions and mutinies and that an end to the capitalist order was both possible and necessary was replaced with concepts around patriotism, support for the state and established order and the benefits of maintaining armed forces under state control for use at home or abroad.</p>
<p>The Haig Fund, which started the annual sale of poppies – donations to ease the burden on state finances of supporting discharged fighters – started in 1921. With nauseating complacency, the ruling class felt able to name the initiative after Douglas Haig, who had commanded the British Army on the Western Front from 1915 until the end of the war. To illustrate Haig’s role during the war, we can quote 2 sources neither of whom are friends of proletarian revolution. The Canada War Museum (www.warmuseum.ca) summarise that <em>“His … costly offensives at the Somme (1916) and Passchendaele (1917) have become nearly synonymous with the carnage and futility of First World War battles.”</em> This is substantiated by the military historian, B.H. Liddell Hart, who is quoted on the Historynet web site, “<em>He [Haig] was a man of supreme egoism and utter lack of scruple—who, to his overweening ambition, sacrificed hundreds of thousands of men”.</em></p>
<p><strong>Another 100 years of imperialist bloodbaths – and state-sponsored delusions</strong></p>
<p>Since the first “Poppy Day” the Imperialist world system has steamrollered forward generating war after war and avoidable disaster after avoidable disaster.</p>
<p>In Britain, since 1960 the developing technical nature of warfare meant that conscription was no longer the best way to feed the military mincing machine. Instead the British armed forces have depended on paying volunteer recruits. Without a doubt, at the bottom end of the structures many of the “Boys from the Mersey and the Thames and the Tyne” (Oliver’s Army, Elvis Costello) were effectively economic conscripts as the chances of stable traditional, adequately paid wage slavery became increasingly scarce. At the end of their “service” the returning working class soldiers are welcomed back to the reality of the bosses’ system. They face virtual abandonment and often end up homeless or in mental institutions. Rates of suicide are understandably disproportionately high. They are utterly expendable with many having to depend on charities for support for themselves and their families.</p>
<p>That in turn, has linked with the rolling back of generalised working class consciousness and combativity. The other side of that ideological defeat is shown very clearly around November 11th every year.</p>
<p>Every sporting event is now prefaced with a ceremony as part of the nationalist carnival. The UK Football Associations insist that teams wear the Poppy emblem despite supposed bans on political symbols. Individuals such as the Irish international, James McClean, who refuse to take part are vilified, abused and attacked (<a href="http://www.birminghammail.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/fa-probe-alleged-attack-west-13870769">birminghammail.co.uk</a>).</p>
<p>In many workplaces, the poppies are sold in such a way that refusal is seen as a “deviant” behaviour. The bosses, with the complicity of Trades Unions where present, organise the “minute’s silence” enforcing participation in the spectacle.</p>
<p>It is clear that all the main broadcasters exercise influence on their employees and those appearing in interviews etc. to wear the poppy. Politicians of all parties also play their part in carnival celebrating the established order. How appropriate that Jeremy Corbyn and his close acolytes maintain the Labourist tradition of national class collaboration dating back to the First World War.</p>
<p>In every city, town and village ceremonies are held with past, present or future members of the armed forces where patriotic duty is extolled and we are all asked to think of those who made the “ultimate sacrifice”. What is absolutely drowned out amidst the bugle calls, national flags and militarist ceremonies is any thought of how, why and in who’s interests so many millions have been killed or had their bodies and minds wrecked.</p>
<p><strong>The socialist alternative</strong></p>
<p>The unthinking commitment to the national flag and acceptance that “national interest” is the central guide to activity is a poison that the working class is forced to drink. It is part of the schematic of lies and delusions that helps them to maintain their power and control over the great majority – those whose work produces all wealth.</p>
<p>Embedded in that nationalist mumbo-jumbo is the mystification that somehow those who, by accident of birth, are born of one nation are intrinsically different from those born a few miles away. Such nonsense is apparent even to liberals lacking any understanding of class society.</p>
<p><em>But now, for the first time, I see you are a man like me. I thought of your hand-grenades, of your bayonet, of your rifle; now I see your wife and your face and our fellowship. Forgive me, comrade. We always see it too late. Why do they never tell us that you are poor devils like us, that your mothers are just as anxious as ours, and that we have the same fear of death, and the same dying and the same agony--Forgive me, comrade; how could you be my enemy?</em> (Remarque) [1]</p>
<p>Unfortunately, the material needs of the capitalist system means that the horrors unleashed by nationalism – not just war but the whole range of racism and xenophobia – are prices well worth paying to keep the working class confused and divided.</p>
<p>Socialists, on the other hand have always seen that the overthrow of capitalism is the essential bridge to ending war and genocide.</p>
<p>The Marxist revolutionary, John Maclean, wrote in December 1915 – “<em>We socialists, who believe that the only war worth fighting is the class war against robbery and slavery of the workers, do not mean to lay down our lives for British or any other capitalism. If we die we shall die here defending the few rights our forefathers died for….”</em></p>
<p><em>Or as Rosa Luxemburg said of the First World War:</em></p>
<p><em>This bloody nightmare of hell will not cease until the workers of Germany, of France, or Russia and of England will wake out of their drunken sleep; will clasp each other’s’ hands in brotherhood and will drown the bestial chorus of war agitators and the hoarse cry of capitalist hyenas with the mighty cry of labour, “proletarians of all countries unite!”</em></p>
<p><strong>NO WAR BUT THE CLASS WAR!</strong></p>
<p><strong>KT</strong></p>
<p>10 November 2017</p>
<p><strong>Notes</strong></p>
<p>[1] Erich Maria Remarque, author of “All Quiet on the Western Front” from which both quotes are taken</p>
<p>[2] It is sweet and honourable to die for the fatherland (Roman poet Horace, ironically son of a slave)</p>
<p>[3] Wilfred Owen, one of the group known Britain as the “War Poets”</p>
<p>[4] “Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel” Samuel Johnson, 1775</p>
<p>[5] For more on this see <a href="http://libcom.org/history/dockers-boycott-ss-jolly-george-1920">libcom.org</a></p>
<p>[6] “A spectre is haunting Europe – the spectre of Communism” – the opening words of the Communist Manifesto</p>
<p>For more on the commemoration racket see <a href="http://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2009-09-01/harry-patch-the-last-fighting-tommy-has-died-but-warmongering-lives-on">leftcom.org</a></p>
<blockquote class="remark"><p><a href="http://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2014-07-16/their-first-world-war-commemorations-and-ours">leftcom.org</a></p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="remark"><p><a href="http://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2014-02-27/remembering-the-first-world-war-ruling-class-battle-for-hearts-and-minds">leftcom.org</a></p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="remark"><p><a href="http://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2014-10-22/%E2%80%9Cthe-only-war-worth-fighting-is-the-class-war%E2%80%9D-i">leftcom.org</a></p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="remark"><p><a href="http://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2016-11-13/lest-we-forget-1916-and-all-that-what-has-it-got-to-do-with-us">leftcom.org</a></p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="remark"><p><a href="http://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2014-10-02/social-democracy-the-first-world-war-and-the-working-class-in-britain">leftcom.org</a></p>
</blockquote>
</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-authored field-type-datetime field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><span class="date-display-single">Thursday, November 9, 2017</span></div></div></div><div class="field-group-format group_tags field-group-div group-tags speed-fast effect-none"><div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-5 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/es/publications/documents">Documents</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-8 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/es/articles/imperialism">Imperialism</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/es/articles/social-classes">Social classes</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-9 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/es/articles/conflicts">Conflicts</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/es/articles/repression-and-control">Repression and control</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-10 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/es/articles/1914-18-world-war-i">1914-18: World War I</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-4 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/es/articles/british-isles">British Isles</a></div></div></div></div>Thu, 09 Nov 2017 16:12:34 +0000Cleishbotham34840 at http://www.leftcom.orghttp://www.leftcom.org/es/node/34840#commentsL'importanza di Zimmerwald oggihttp://www.leftcom.org/es/node/32818
<div class="field field-name-field-images field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="http://www.leftcom.org/files/1920-01-01-kustodiev-bolshevik.jpg"><img src="http://www.leftcom.org/files/styles/galleryformatter_slide/public/1920-01-01-kustodiev-bolshevik.jpg?itok=k9u-Bg7w" width="415" height="312" /></a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>
<strong>Zimmerwald: Lenin guida la lotta della sinistra rivoluzionaria per una nuova Internazionale</strong></p>
<p>Dal 5 all’8 settembre del 1915 si è tenuta a Zimmerwald, nella Svizzera neutrale, una conferenza a cui hanno partecipato circa una quarantina di socialisti contrari alla guerra. Le questioni chiave in gioco nel dibattito tra le opposte correnti politiche a Zimmerwald avrebbero avuto eco in tutta l'Europa negli anni seguenti e presentano ancora implicazioni per il nostro lavoro di oggi.</p>
<p>Era ormai passato più di un anno dal momento in cui la seconda Internazionale era crollata come un castello di carte quando i principali partiti che la componevano si schierarono a sostegno degli intenti guerrafondai delle rispettive "patrie". Per i marxisti rivoluzionari, la maggior parte dei quali aveva lottato contro il revisionismo prima della guerra, e che riconoscevano che la guerra imperialista globale rappresentava un mutamento storico del quadro - in cui venivano a esistere le condizioni oggettive per il socialismo - non c’erano dubbi sulla necessità di una nuova Internazionale, che avrebbe dovuto tenere fermamente il punto sull’affermazione di Marx che i lavoratori non hanno patria e che guidasse la lotta per il socialismo. Tra di essi Trotsky, che aveva scritto, poco dopo l'inizio della guerra, della nuova Internazionale che doveva nascere da quel cataclisma mondiale; i Tribunisti olandesi associati a Pannekoek, Roland Holst e Gorter, il cui <em>Imperialismo, guerra mondiale e socialdemocrazia</em> ribadiva che “<em>questa guerra è il crogiolo da cui deve nascere la nuova Internazionale</em>”; la Sinistra tedesca che si era scissa dal gruppo <em>Raggi di Luce</em> (<em>Lichtstrahlen</em>) di Borchardt; la Sinistra di Brema intorno a Johan Knief e Paul Frolich e, naturalmente, Karl Liebknecht e Rosa Luxemburg; la socialdemocrazia di Polonia e Lituania (anche il partito di Rosa Luxemburg e Jogisches) che allo scoppio della guerra si erano unite con l'ala sinistra del PPS e il Bund per cercare di organizzare uno sciopero generale contro la guerra su una base essenzialmente disfattista rivoluzionaria (“<em>Il proletariato dichiara guerra ai suoi governi, i suoi oppressori!</em>”).</p>
<p>All'interno di questa corrente alcuni hanno dato più importanza di altri all'urgenza di fondare una nuova Internazionale, che avrebbe apertamente confermato il tradimento della socialdemocrazia, sfidato il suo diritto di parlare in nome della classe operaia e dato la direzione politica su come poter unificare le lotte della classe operaia internazionale in una lotta rivoluzionaria per il socialismo. Hermann Gorter, per esempio, si allontanò dalla vita politica durante due anni cruciali. Altri, come Rosa Luxemburg, immaginavano che la nuova Internazionale sarebbe stata edificata dopo la guerra – o meglio, dopo che la lotta della classe operaia avrebbe posto fine ad essa. <sup id="ref1"><a href="#fn1">(1)</a></sup></p>
<p>Anche tra gli internazionalisti c'era confusione sul fatto che “Guerra alla guerra” significasse che il proletariato doveva lottare per la pace come condizione preliminare per la costruzione del socialismo o, come affermava insistentemente Lenin, che nella lotta contro gli orribili costi della guerra i lavoratori non avevano altra scelta che sbarazzarsi dei loro governi, prendere la situazione nelle loro mani e incamminarsi sulla via rivoluzionaria verso il socialismo.</p>
<p>Basandosi sull'esperienza della Comune di Parigi e della rivoluzione del 1905 in Russia, Lenin insisteva sulla probabilità che la guerra mondiale avrebbe creato di per se stessa una situazione rivoluzionaria in cui, se la classe lavoratrice fosse stata costretta a difendere i propri interessi, avrebbe dovuto prendere il potere nelle proprie mani e dare inizio alla lotta mondiale per il socialismo.</p>
<p>«<em>Una volta che la guerra è iniziata, non è pensabile di fuggire da essa. Bisogna andare avanti e fare ciò che un socialista deve fare. ... Bisogna andare lì e organizzare il proletariato per l'obiettivo finale, perchè è utopistico pensare che il proletariato raggiungerà il suo obiettivo in modo pacifico. ...</em>» (Golos 37/38, ottobre 1914)</p>
<p>Da questa prospettiva consegue che:</p>
<blockquote><p>Trasformare la presente guerra imperialista in guerra civile è l'unica parola d'ordine proletaria corretta. Ciò è indicato dall'esperienza della Comune, è stato sottolineato dalla risoluzione di Basilea (1912) e consegue da tutti le situazioni di guerra imperialista tra paesi altamente sviluppati. Per quanto difficile tale trasformazione possa apparire in un momento o in un altro, i socialisti non dovranno rinunciare mai a un sistematico, insistente, inflessibile lavoro preparatorio in questa direzione una volta che la guerra sia divenuta una realtà. <br/> Solo per questa strada il proletariato sarà in grado di liberarsi dall'influenza della borghesia sciovinista e, prima o poi, in un modo o nell'altro, compirà passi decisivi sulla via della vera libertà dei popoli e sulla via verso il socialismo. <br/> Viva la fratellanza internazionale dei lavoratori uniti contro lo sciovinismo e il patriottismo della borghesia di tutti i paesi! <br/> Viva l'Internazionale proletaria, libera dall’opportunismo.</p>
<address>La guerra e la socialdemocrazia russa, scritto nell'ottobre e pubblicato nel novembre 1914</address>
</blockquote>
<p>Durante il suo esilio in Svizzera Lenin si batté su diversi fronti perché il partito bolscevico russo accettasse la prospettiva internazionalista proletaria di prepararsi alla trasformazione della guerra imperialista in guerra civile. Prima di tutto si battè tra i bolscevichi in esilio all'estero, alcuni dei quali pensavano fosse un loro dovere arruolarsi volontari nell'esercito francese (una posizione sostenuta da Plekhanov, un tempo considerato pietra portante del marxismo in Russia). Alla Conferenza di Berna dei gruppi all'estero del Partito Operaio Socialdemocratico Russo nei primi mesi del 1915, alcuni gruppi bolscevichi dalla Francia si opposero al suo appello per il disfattismo rivoluzionario, preferendogli la “lotta per la pace”. C'era una simile disputa anche all'interno del partito in Russia, in particolare sull'idea di “disfattismo”, che alcuni militanti come Shlyapnikov sostenevano allontanasse i lavoratori, ma alla fine i militanti di base videro che la linea di lavoro era quella di preparare politicamente e praticamente uno sbocco rivoluzionario per la classe lavoratrice, poiché il costo della continuazione della guerra indeboliva il regime zarista.</p>
<p>Sul fronte internazionale l’obiettivo era sostanzialmente lo stesso: opporsi all’argomento che “non si può far niente” durante la guerra (specialmente la perla di Kautsky, cioè che l'Internazionale era un'arma per il tempo di pace che sarebbe tornata in vita dopo la guerra); radunare le forze che erano pronte a rompere la “pace sociale” e chiamare i lavoratori a difendere i propri interessi. In breve, preparare il terreno per una nuova Internazionale sulla base del fatto che i lavoratori non devono alcun fedeltà ai governi esistenti e per una linea di lavoro basata sulla trasformazione della guerra imperialista in guerra civile. Nel 1915 i segni della crescente stanchezza per la guerra erano già evidenti: a dispetto della legge marziale, in Germania scoppiarono manifestazioni di piazza contro il costo della vita; da aprile gli scioperi si moltiplicarono in Russia e assunsero un carattere più politico. Nel mese di luglio i bolscevichi di Pietroburgo guidarono un boicottaggio dei Comitati delle Industrie di Guerra, istituiti dal regime per arruolare i lavoratori allo sforzo bellico.</p>
<p>Anche il Bureau Socialista Internazionale (BSI) della vecchia Internazionale priva di vita fu trascinato ad approvare conferenze di “pace”. In gennaio i socialdemocratici dei paesi neutrali si riunirono a Copenaghen e lanciarono un appello ai socialisti degli Stati belligeranti ad agire per fermare la guerra. In febbraio il britannoco ILP ospitò una conferenza di "socialisti" delle potenze dell'Intesa presieduta da Keir Hardie, in cui al bolscevico Litvinov fu impedito di leggere una dichiarazione internazionalista. La risoluzione adottata dalla conferenza dichiarava che la guerra era il prodotto degli antagonismi prodotti dalla società capitalistica, dall'imperialismo e dalla competizione coloniale e ogni paese aveva una parte di responsabilità; ciononostante passò una risoluzione sulla necessità di continuare la guerra in quanto una vittoria della Germania avrebbe portato alla fine della libertà, dell'indipendenza nazionale e della fiducia nei trattati. Speravano che dopo la guerra ci sarebbero state la fine della diplomazia segreta, degli “interessi dei costruttori di armamenti” e dell’arbitrato internazionale obbligatorio. I lavoratori dei paesi alleati stavano combattendo una guerra difensiva contro i governi tedesco e austriaco, non contro i popoli tedesco e austriaco, e avrebbero resistito ai tentativi di trasformarla in una guerra di conquista. La risoluzione chiedeva specificamente la restaurazione del Belgio, l’autonomia o l’indipendenza per la Polonia e la soluzione di tutti i problemi nazionali dell'Europa, dall'Alsazia-Lorena ai Balcani, sulla base dell' autodeterminazione nazionale.</p>
<p>In aprile a Vienna un'omologa riunione di socialdemocratici degli Imperi Centrali emanò risoluzioni che trattavano principalmente le relazioni del dopoguerra.</p>
<p>Tuttavia, quando i partiti socialdemocratici italiano e svizzero proposero una riunione contro la guerra di gruppi di lavoratori a prescindere dal ruolo dei rispettivi paesi nel conflitto, il BSI non ne volle sapere.</p>
<p>Gli organizzatori decisero di andare avanti comunque e indire una conferenza di tutti i partiti socialisti e di gruppi di lavoratori</p>
<blockquote><p>che sono contro la pace civile, che aderiscono alle basi della lotta di classe, e che sono disposti, trarmite l'azione simultanea, a lottare per la pace immediata ...</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Dal punto di vista organizzativo, Zimmerwald era al di fuori della sfera di competenza di una Seconda Internazionale ormai marcia. Politicamente, però, non vi era l'intenzione di sabotare la socialdemocrazia. Quando Zinoviev propose che lo scopo della prossima conferenza fosse di organizzarsi intorno a una chiara linea rivoluzionaria e di prepararsi per una netta rottura con la vecchia Internazionale, gli si diede poca attenzione. Eppure, Lenin vi scorse un'opportunità per i rivoluzionari di farsi ascoltare, di espandere la loro influenza e consolidare le forze necessarie per la creazione di una nuova Internazionale. Nei mesi precedenti la conferenza vi fu un'intensa corrispondenza e discussione nella Sinistra sui punti chiave da includere in una dichiarazione congiunta sul proletariato e la guerra. Sia Radek e Lenin avevano scritto bozze di risoluzione. Alexandra Kollontaj organizzò la partecipazione dei socialisti di sinistra svedesi e norvegesi. Fu contattato il gruppo marxista attorno al giornale olandese <em>De Tribune</em> (La Tribuna).</p>
<p>I bolscevichi pubblicarono un opuscolo in lingua tedesca da far circolare tra i delegati ... Conteneva l’articolo <em>Il socialismo e la guerra</em> di Lenin e Zinov'ev , così come le risoluzioni del Comitato Centrale e della conferenza di Berna. Era inclusa anche la risoluzione dei bolscevichi del 1913 sulla questione nazionale, un campo in cui i rivoluzionari russi avevano forti differenze con molti dei loro alleati di sinistra. <sup id="ref2"><a href="#fn2">(2)</a></sup></p>
<p>Quest'ultima questione è stata un elemento di discordia che non fu mai risolto prima della formazione del terza Internationale. Tuttavia, nel periodo immediatamente precedente l'incontro di Zimmerwald, Lenin dovette cedere alla maggioranza interna alla Sinistra: nelle discussioni preparatorie alla conferenza sul testo della dichiarazione che la sinistra avrebbe presentato, la maggior parte degli otto delegati preferì la bozza di Radek a quella di Lenin. La versione finale (sotto) non fa alcun riferimento a nazioni oppresse o che opprimono.</p>
<p>Questo non fu un grosso problema, poiché la maggioranza dei delegati alla conferenza non avrebbe tollerato nemmeno una versione annacquata del disfattismo rivoluzionario: la risoluzione della sinistra fu bocciata. Il <em>Manifesto di Zimmerwald</em> passato alla storia fu il risultato di un compromesso: fu steso in buona parte da Trotsky, che in questo periodo faceva parte degli “<em>elementi vacillanti</em>” che facevano uscire il <em>Nashe Slovo</em> (Il nostro mondo) a Parigi sotto lo slogan “<em>pace senza indennità o annessioni, senza conquistatori o conquistati</em>”. La Sinistra lo firmò comunque, dal momento che fu capace di aggiungervi un'appendice riguardante i suoi limiti. Nel settembre 1915 Lenin poté descrivere Zimmerwald come il “primo passo” che:</p>
<blockquote><p>nonostante tutta la sua debolezza e la sua timidezza [segnava l'inizio di] una vera lotta contro l'opportunismo, fino a una rottura con esso <sup id="ref3"><a href="#fn3">(3)</a></sup>.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Così perlomeno sembrò. In realtà il passo avanti più importante fu il fatto che la maggior parte degli internazionalisti si era riunita e organizzata in maniera indipendente: prima di lasciare Zimmerwald essi avevano istituito il Bureau della Sinistra di Zimmerwald, composto da Lenin, Zinov'ev e Radek. I documenti che avevano presentato alla conferenza furono pubblicati sull'<em>Internationales Flugblatt</em> (Volantino Internazionale) e nel 1916 vide la luce – per breve tempo – anche il giornale <em>Vorbote</em> (Messaggero), che avrebbe dovuto essere un luogo di dibattito interno alla Sinistra.</p>
<p>Durante il 1916 la crisi provocata dalla guerra e prevista da Lenin si acuì in tutta Europa. Il divario tra la maggioranza di Zimmerwald, che non voleva tagliare in maniera netta con la socialdemocrazia, e la Sinistra divenne un abisso. Dopo la Rivoluzione di Febbraio in Russia Lenin affermò che:</p>
<blockquote><p>la palude di Zimmerwald non è più tollerabile [e che ora vi era il bisogno immediato di fondare una] nuova Internazionale, proletaria … comprendente solo le Sinistre.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>La conferenza di Zimmerwald non è nella lista di eventi legati alla Grande Guerra commemorati da personaggi come Sergio Mattarella e Matteo Renzi: “onoranze” il cui scopo è perpetuare il mito della “patria in guerra”. Nonostante questo, vi sono anche miti fatti circolare dalla sinistra borghese sul significato di Zimmerwald per i socialisti e la classe lavoratrice oggi. Tra di essi, per prima cosa, c'è l'idea che “Zimmerwald-in-toto” sia un esempio da seguire oggi: in sostanza questo significa rifiutarsi di accettare che la socialdemocrazia è fondamentalmente il baluardo del capitalismo e un ostacolo sulla via dell'autonoma lotta di classe, che è l'unico sentiero che possa portare alla lotta rivoluzionaria per il socialismo, il che significa il rovesciamento dell'attuale <em>status quo</em>. Il punto è che il Manifesto di Zimmerwald a quel tempo fu visto come un passo verso la completa rottura con la socialdemocrazia, ma oggi sappiamo che la maggioranza di quei delegati non fece mai il passo successivo. Ad ogni modo, è quasi ridicolo vedere come le falsificazioni della storia vengano riprese da Counterfire – i cui membri partecipano praticamente ad ogni movimento di protesta interclassista del momento, in particolare la Stop The War Coalition – il cui articolo su Zimmerwald ci dice che:</p>
<blockquote><p>Il Manifesto di Zimmerwald contribuì ad ispirare un movimento di massa di attivisti pacifisti e socialisti attraverso i paesi belligeranti dell'Europa. Per finire: gli ideali di Zimmerwald diventarono una fonte di ispirazione per un movimento crescente di azione militante che preparò le rivoluzioni del 1917 e del 1918.</p>
<address>John Riddell, Counterfire 31.8.2015 <a href="http://www.counterfire.org/">counterfire.org</a> </address>
</blockquote>
<p>Ciò è insincero, se viene da parte di qualcuno che ha compiuto uno studio approfondito di Zimmerwald e del ruolo di Lenin nel movimento di fondazione della terza Internazionale. Come se la lotta per il comunismo, il rovesciamento dello Stato capitalista, i bolscevichi, gli spartachisti, la Rivoluzione d'Ottobre e l'ondata rivoluzionaria del proletariato che fece finire la guerra mondiale siano stati il prodotto dell'azione militante di un pugno di attivisti. Per quanto assurda, questa è un'utile leggenda che può essere usata per giustificare praticamente ogni protesta riformista (“azione militante”) come la via che nel passato “preparò le rivoluzioni del 1917 e del 1918” e che oggi... beh, per come viene messa nel post <em>No Glory In War (Non c'è gloria nella guerra)</em>, l'anniversario di Zimmerwald può essere usato per “promuovere la pace e la cooperazione internazionale (sic)”.</p>
<p>Per tutti questi sedicenti rivoluzionari di oggi che nei fatti di Russia vedono solo la controrivoluzione e ne piazzano la colpa sulle spalle di Lenin e del Partito bolscevico, è tempo di riconoscere l'importanza del ruolo di Lenin nella nascita la Sinistra di Zimmerwald e della sua presa posizione per l'internazionalismo proletario; e la lotta rivoluzionaria per il socialismo, che significa inevitabilmente fronteggiare e rovesciare lo Stato capitalista. Lenin si batté affinché non ci fossero tregue nella guerra di classe (niente burgfrieds, niente inchini a regolamenti da stato di emergenza, nessuna adesione a “paci sociali”): “trasformare la guerra in guerra civile”.</p>
<p>Per i rivoluzionari di oggi che si trovano ad affrontare le guerre capitalistiche non è questione di ripetere semplicemente formule del passato qualsiasi sia il contesto, ma il principio di fare appello alla classe lavoratrice affinché non sacrifichi i propri interessi alla “difesa nazionale” o allo “sforzo bellico” rimane valido, incitandola invece a difendere l'interesse proprio, ricordandole che i lavoratori non hanno patria e che l'unica guerra che vale la pena combattere è quella di classe.</p>
<p>Soprattutto, l'importanza di Zimmerwald è che fu un passo verso la creazione di una nuova Internazionale. Alla fine – inevitabilmente, forse – fu un po' troppo tardi. Il vero significato di Zimmerwald per i rivoluzionari di oggi non è che al proletariato internazionale non serve un partito rivoluzionario. Piuttosto il contrario: un partito con un programma chiaro e unanimemente condiviso deve essere messo in esistenza prima che il proletariato debba nuovamente affrontare nella pratica la questione di come liberarsi del capitalismo. Non qualcosa come il Bureau Socialista Internazionale, che Camille Huysmans descrisse nel 1904, quando ne assunse la carica di segretario, come “niente più di una cassetta per le lettere e un indirizzo postale, un semplice mezzo di comunicazione senza potere e influenza reali”. Il futuro partito internazionale giocherà un ruolo-chiave sia dal punto di vista politico che organizzativo nella rivoluzione proletaria mondiale.</p>
<address>ER</address>
<p><a href="#ref1" id="fn1">(1)</a></p>
<blockquote><p>O l'Internazionale rimarrà un muchio di spazzatura dopo la guerra, o essa risorgerà a partire dalla lotta di classe, dalla quale soltanto essa trarrà le sue energie vitali. … Solo per mezzo di una “ denuncia atrocemente accurata della nostra stessa indecisione e debolezza”, della nostra stessa disfatta morale a partire del 4 agosto, può avere inizio la ricostruzione dell'Internazionale. E il primo passo in questa direzione è entrare in azione per una rapida fine della guerra e per la preparazione di una pace in accordo con i comuni interessi del proletariato internazionale.</p>
<address>Ricostruire l'Internazionale, in Die Internationale, n. 1, 1915, Rosa Luxemburg Internet Archive, marxists.org, 2000</address>
</blockquote>
<p>Questo passaggio riflette l'importanza che Luxemburg conferiva al movimento spontaneo della classe, così come la sua tragica riluttanza a rompere in maniera netta con la SPD. La sua enfasi sulla “preparazione della pace” non significa però che proponesse una specie di papocchio capitalista gestito da una Società delle Nazioni e può voler dire , tra l'altro, che ella aveva in mente l'ufficiale della censura (poiché appena Die Internationale uscì, fu immediatamente messo al bando, mentre la stessa Luxemburg era già in prigione e non aveva alcuna possibilità di spostamento).</p>
<p><a href="#ref2" id="fn2">(2)</a> Lenin’s Struggle for a New International, Documenti, ed. John Riddell, Monad Press.</p>
<p><a href="#ref3" id="fn3">(3)</a> Si trova su:</p>
<blockquote class="remark"><p><a href="http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/cw/index.htm#volume21">marxists.org</a></p>
</blockquote>
</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-authored field-type-datetime field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><span class="date-display-single">Sunday, September 25, 2016</span></div></div></div><div class="field-group-format group_tags field-group-div group-tags speed-fast effect-none"><div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-5 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/es/publications/prometeo">Prometeo</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-10 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/es/articles/1914-18-world-war-i">1914-18: World War I</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-6 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/es/articles/vladimir-lenin">Vladimir Lenin</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-7 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/es/articles/leninism">Leninism</a></div></div></div></div>Sun, 25 Sep 2016 17:40:27 +0000webmaster32818 at http://www.leftcom.orghttp://www.leftcom.org/es/node/32818#commentsIreland: The 1916 Easter Rising 100 Years Onhttp://www.leftcom.org/es/node/30683
<div class="field field-name-field-images field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="http://www.leftcom.org/files/Oconnel%20st.jpg"><img src="http://www.leftcom.org/files/styles/galleryformatter_slide/public/Oconnel%20st.jpg?itok=ndUvfaH7" width="364" height="312" /></a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>
The modern Irish Republic was formally ushered into existence on Easter Monday 1949. The choice of day was no accident but a deliberate symbolic identification with the Easter Rising thirty-three years earlier. By that time the actual events of the Rising had been overtaken by myth-making. The Irish national cause had been flagging well before 1916 but the Rising gave it the “martyrs” it needed. The Rising, they claimed in 1949, had been the spark which led to the rise of the Republican movement and the eventual independence of the 26 counties outside Ulster from British imperial rule. This some historians dispute (pointing to the fight against conscription into the British Army in 1918 as the beginning of a wider nationalist movement). No matter, this year the Irish State and the various factions of its bourgeoisie are competing to claim it for themselves by honouring its hundredth anniversary with more than the usual annual ritual commemorations.</p>
<p>The following article is based on one we wrote in 1986 and it has an entirely different focus – that of the relationship between nationalism and the working class struggle for socialism. It shows that far from confirming the correctness of working class participation in national uprisings in the epoch of imperialism, 1916 actually represented the collapse of the independent Irish workers’ movement in its capitulation to bourgeois nationalism, with important implications for the subsequent defeat of workers struggles in Ireland after the First World War.</p>
<p><strong>JAMES CONNOLLY AND THE NATIONAL QUESTION</strong></p>
<p>On Easter Monday 1916 sections of the Irish petty bourgeoisie led by the radical part of the nationalist intelligentsia allied with James Connolly’s Irish Citizen Army, a small trade union militia which could arguably be called the armed wing of the working class, carried out an insurrection against the British imperialist administration of Ireland. They were all fighting for an independent Irish republic, but with Connolly also fighting for a wider goal – social revolution. However, from its outset the Dublin Rising of Easter Week 1916 was doomed to failure. Its consequences though have reverberated down the last century. Not only did 1916 give the Republican movement its martyrology and nationalism a popular base, the Irish socialist movement, already weakened by the defeat of the 1913 Dublin Lock Out strike, became subordinate to nationalism, retreating into trade union building and reformism.</p>
<p>Why should James Connolly, founder of the Irish Socialist Republican Party (1896), and apparently quite aware that the interests of the working class are opposed to those of the bourgeoisie, have seen a bourgeois national revolution as a necessity before a fight for socialism could be started? The answer only becomes comprehensible when it is realised that Connolly made serious concessions to bourgeois ideology, and not only on religion (i.e. in private he claimed to be an atheist, in public he posed as a Catholic[1]) but also in his confusions on nationalism. Basically, while Connolly drew much inspiration from the theory and practice of the Marxist socialist movement, his general political approach (profoundly influenced by the then syndicalism and mechanical materialism of the early British workers’ movement), was some distance from that of Marx.</p>
<p>Connolly never really grasped that the nation is a concoction of the bourgeoisie and the basic form of its class domination over society. Nor did he sufficiently understand the dangerous role of nationalism as a counter-weight to the revolutionary energies of the working class, despite his courageous anti-war stance in 1914, so he rapidly gravitated away from his defence of workers’ political independence and any prospect of a proletarian solution to the imperialist slaughter. Working with a mechanical concept of a ‘two stage’ revolution, in which the achievement of national independence and the establishment of a bourgeois-democratic Republic were seen as being the precursor to socialism at a later date, Connolly abandoned an independent class terrain and entered the national movement in alliance with capitalist forces fighting for national self-determination.</p>
<p>Now while in the 19th century national wars and movements for independence were generally part of the progressive development of the capitalist mode of production by 1914 this was no longer the case. Marx and Engels had only supported the idea of liberation for those nations which they saw as being able to advance the capitalist mode of production and thus the expansion of the working class. In this sense national liberation would be preparing the basis for communism. However with the continual concentration and centralisation of capital leading towards not just a world market but a world economy the character of capitalism began to change. This concentration of capital led to the formation of monopolies in various branches of the national capital and thus to becoming national standard bearers of those economies on the world market. The increasingly global operation of the law of value meant that more and more the private interests of these great concentrations coalesced increasingly with the state needs of the great capitalist powers. The world was thus entering the epoch of imperialism characterised by the division of the world among several imperialist powers. As a consequence the national liberation struggles of minor nations were transformed into struggles between rival imperialist powers in which the working class had nothing to gain and very much to lose. The period when workers could support national liberation came to a definitive close with the start of the First World War in 1914. In the epoch of crises, wars and social decomposition, all possible socialist support for one bourgeois bloc against another was a thing of the past. This realisation did not dawn on all revolutionaries at this time. Lenin, for all his ringing declarations against imperialist war, still thought that politically it was still possible for some national movements to be supported. In the anti-war movement of the Zimmerwald and Kienthal Left he was almost alone in this view. Without delving deeply into the complexities of the debates amongst revolutionary Marxists on the national question at this time, it was the arguments of the Polish Social Democrats led by Rosa Luxemburg against the possibility of progressive national wars in the period of imperialism, rather than those of Lenin (who was to see 1916 as a blow to imperialism which supported his belief that workers still ought to participate in national movements) which were to be confirmed by the experience of the Easter Rising.</p>
<p>Thus Connolly’s weak theoretical roots (and those of the Irish workers’ movement more generally) and his opportunist position after 1914, were to lead directly to the tragic and suicidal 1916 putsch, and the submergence of the working class in reactionary nationalist ideology.</p>
<p><strong>POLITICAL FORCES AND SOCIAL CLASSES</strong></p>
<p>With the outbreak of imperialist conflict in 1914 most bourgeois protagonists in the tangled and bitter ‘Irish Question’ accepted the postponement of Home Rule until the end of the war. At this time the strongest organised political force in the southern part of Ireland was the Irish Parliamentary Party led by John Redmond, embodying the interests of the internal bourgeoisie.</p>
<p>These political interests were mainly a Home Rule state with close economic links to Britain. To secure this end, Redmond and other members of his party functioned as recruiting sergeants for the British army, triggering a split in the Irish Volunteers (a force created in November 1913 as a counter to the Ulster Volunteers, an organisation originally formed to fight against Home Rule.) The members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), Sinn Fein and other radical nationalists in the Provisional Committee of the Volunteers split from the Redmondites, taking around 12,000 of the most active Volunteers with them. The radical nationalists in the Irish Volunteers were united on opposition to Redmond’s recruiting policy, and on a longer term, for the goal of an independent Ireland. But they were divided on tactics. The ‘moderate’ wing, including the Chief of Staff MacNeill, followed a cautious and defensive policy, and held that unless the Government should attempt to impose conscription on Ireland or the Germans should invade Ireland, developments after the war had ended would show if an armed struggle was necessary. The most ‘radical’ wing was mainly (but not exclusively) composed of IRB members. They agreed that before the war ended the independence of Ireland should be asserted in arms. But among these it is also possible to distinguish between a ‘left’ and a ‘right’ wing; the right wing solely building on the traditional Fenian maxim that “England’s difficulty is Ireland’s opportunity”, and saw German help as a necessity for the rising (including Sir Roger Casement and Tom Clarke), and shared with the moderate wing (also including Sinn Fein leader Arthur Griffith) an openly hostile attitude towards the labour movement.</p>
<p>The left wing was less explicitly anti-labour. This section consisted of people like Ceannt, MacDonnagh and the leading ‘brain’ Patrick Pearse. The ideology to which the IRB adhered and which is mainly found in the writings of Pearse (in which, not surprisingly, the concepts of class and class interest are always absent) was typically petty-bourgeois. As was their way of organising: a secret, oathbound society, the IRB worked to take over the Irish Volunteers, and in order to plan a national rising, secretly set up its own Military Council, which only involved the very few IRB members who were also in the leadership of the Volunteers.</p>
<p>As James Larkin[2] left Ireland for the USA in October 1914, James Connolly became the leader of the Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union and the Irish Citizen Army (a workers’ defensive force created after the strike breaking strong-arm methods used in the 1913 Dublin Lock Out), as well as the editor of the paper <em>Irish Worker</em>. At the outbreak of the war, Connolly had immediately taken the standpoint to back working class resistance against the war, e.g. he advocated industrial actions, such as a transport strike to refuse agricultural products to leave Ireland, whereby Ireland might</p>
<p><em>“… yet set the torch to a European conflagration that will not burn out until the last throne and the last capitalist bond and debenture will be shrivelled on the funeral pyre of the last war lord.”</em> (“A Continental Revolution’, <em>Forward</em> August 15th 1914.)</p>
<p>But Connolly saw the struggle for national self-determination as the first step towards a socialist revolution some time later. Thus he thought that even if socialism was not possible for the whole of Europe convulsed in capitalist war, then at least it was still feasible for Ireland. So the two major strategic problems of the Irish working class movement (which Connolly attempted to solve were, first, should the Irish working class work with other revolutionary elements towards the radicalisation of the European (and especially the British) labour movement, or should the Irish working class align with anti-British nationalist forces in Ireland and with them attempt a blow against imperialism. When the opportunist alignment was decided upon (on the basis of Connolly’s weak internationalism), this involved the second problem, that of alliance with the non-working class anti-British forces. Since Connolly believed that the working class should lead and not just tail the national movement, and the only working class organisation that could do this was the Irish Citizen Army, the alliance with the nationalist forces came about through joint actions between the ICA and the Irish Volunteers.</p>
<p>Thus Connolly, as a representative of the labour movement, participated in anti-British activities with representatives from Sinn Fein, the IRB and the Irish Volunteers – publicly against the recruiting of Irishmen for the British army and secretly to establish contact with Germany. During all of 1915, the Irish Volunteers and the ICA trained their military forces. In late 1915, more and more critical of the Volunteers, the ICA openly declared that they would start an insurrection alone (having only little more than 200 armed men!) if the Volunteers would not cooperate, and thereby they hoped to force the more radical elements of the Volunteers to come out in support. The disagreement between the IRB Military Council and Connolly can only be understood if it is realised that since he (wrongly) saw the national rising and national independence as part of a social revolution, a step towards socialism, such a revolution, to be successful, would need mass support, a support which could only be gained by rallying for these ideas actively and openly. Thus Connolly, as General Secretary of the ITGWU, propagated his betrayal of workers’ political autonomy through his involvement in economic struggles, work for labour candidates in Dublin municipal elections, and at the same time attempted to ‘link’ these aspects in the struggle against ‘economic conscription’ (the attempt by employers by economic pressure to force their employees into the British army). On the other hand, the Military Council of the IRB was planning an insurrection in a typical petty-bourgeois putsch manner. It attempted to plan it secretly in order not to alienate the moderate part of the leadership of the Volunteers and in order to surprise the British administration. Obviously, this also meant lack of open rallying for the rising. As Connolly was not involved in the IRB circles, he took the lack of public propaganda to mean that the moderates had taken over the leadership of the Volunteers.</p>
<p><strong>THE RISING AND ITS AFTERMATH</strong></p>
<p>Worried that the ICA would ruin their plans by a premature move, IRB leaders approached Connolly, and during January 1916 he was informed of the plans for an insurrection and became a member of the Military Council. The time from late January was hence mainly used to prepare for the rising. Arrangements for a landing of cargo of arms bought in Germany were made, and the arranging and training of the Volunteer troops all over the country were speeded up.</p>
<p>The actual incidents leading to the failure of the landing of the arms at the coast of Kerry, the failure to keep the planned rising a secret to the moderate leaders, and hence MacNeill’s last moment decision to cancel the parades on Easter Sunday that were to result in a nation-wide insurrection, and the hectic hours in the Military Council to rearrange the plans into a rising on Easter Monday April 24th, have been told many times. One of the consequences was that only just over 1,000 Volunteers and 220 of the ICA took part in the rising. They occupied strategic points in Dublin with the headquarters in the General Post Office in the centre of Dublin, where also the Irish Republic was proclaimed. Although a few hundred more joined the rebels and uncoordinated risings occurred in a few counties, British troops outnumbered the rebels many times over. After nearly a week of street fighting, the rebels surrendered due to the shelling of their headquarters from an English gunboat placed on the River Liffey. While the proclamation of the Republic was phrased according to the petty-bourgeois mystical goals of the Volunteers, the ICA still seemed aware of their professed wider objectives. Connolly had addressed the ICA a week before the rising with the following naïve words: <em>“In the event of victory, hold on to your rifles, as those with whom we are fighting may stop before our goal is reached. We are out for economic as well as for political liberty.”</em></p>
<p>Although workers’ opinion in southern Ireland had generally been hostile towards the nationalist rebellion, the ferocity with which British troops dealt with the insurgents followed by the imposition of martial law, helped to sway their opinion. Especially the executions of 15 of the leaders (in particular the seriously wounded Connolly, who was shot strapped in a chair), but also the internment in English camps of about 2,000 people, of which only 170 were convicted and sent to prison, changed the attitude of many, and led to a tremendous boost for militant Republicanism.</p>
<p>Around this time the British army had many of their men slaughtered in the war, and among the dead were many Irish. Also the threat of conscription in Ireland was increased when in December a Conscription Bill was introduced in Britain. The value of wages and also of war allowances was undermined by price rises, and the stoppage of emigration to the USA, and fear of being conscripted if one worked in England, furthered social discontent which was successfully channelled into a reactionary nationalist void.</p>
<p>The working class, disoriented and weakened, had lost its main leader and theorist, Connolly, along with many other ICA members in the rising. The Irish labour movement eclipsed by nationalism was now led by men, such as Thomas Johnson and William O’Brien, who were self-claimed disciples of Connolly’s teaching: socialism in the syndicalist-inspired comprehension meant the building up of an industrial union, “… and when we find that we control the strategic industries in society, then society must bend to our will – or break.” (Connolly: <em>Socialism Made Easy</em>, 1899), and hence only saw a reformist party taking part in parliamentary elections as a secondary tool in this struggle. Although the ICA continued to exist until 1922, it was merely an appendage of the left wing of the Volunteers, devoid of any genuine socialist content.</p>
<p>Thus when after the end of the First World War the Irish workers took up the class struggle in earnest during the 1919-21 Republican War of Independence, their efforts (like those of the Belfast workers in 1919) were rapidly smothered by the nationalist bourgeoisie. Workers in town and country and poor farmers who took on Irish capitalists and landowners soon found themselves in front of the new courts instituted by the Dáil. And in 1919 the IRA (the Irish Volunteers of 1916 had changed their name in August 1919) brought an end to the strike and expropriation movements of Cork and Limerick workers, with the open complicity of the trade unions and the Catholic hierarchy. The working class had its own symbolism and adopted the name “soviet” in many of the post-war struggles across Ireland at this time but they were a far cry from the actual soviet movement which had destroyed the Russian Empire in 1917. Under the sway of union leaders like Connolly’s successor, O’Brien, they were constantly sabotaged and told to abandon social experiment in return for minor gains.</p>
<p><strong>CONCLUSIONS</strong></p>
<p>Connolly and the ICA went “out to be slaughtered” (his own words) on Easter Monday 1916 under the suicidal illusion that once the ICA had become the driving force in the Republican movement this would mean that the working class, especially through industrial actions (which never materialised), would come out in spontaneous support or at least that when the working class had taken the lead in the national struggle they would be able to lead it, in the end, into a struggle for socialism. The actual effect of the 1916 Easter Rising was the exact opposite. It gave substantial impetus to the Republican and nationalist movement which had been relatively weak among working class expressions beforehand. Thus the rising was no romantic ‘do-or-die’ act of heroism, but an inglorious brutal defeat and surrender of workers’ independence from which the movement in Ireland never recovered.</p>
<p>Not only was the experience of the proletarian revolutionary wave of 1917-1923 and its defeat to clarify to communists Connolly’s confusions and errors on the socialist project but also confirmed that the lesson of events like 1916 is not to compromise with any faction of the bourgeoisie in the imperialist epoch, no matter what the apparent objective situation might suggest. In Ireland today this means no compromises with any brand of nationalism whether it be Fianna Fail, Fine Gael, or Sinn Fein, who all present themselves as “The Inheritors of 1916”. Today in a globalised world economy the working class has faced a century of retreat since the First World War and the revolutionary wave which followed it. But the contradictions of the capitalist economy never go away and neither does the class struggle. The rise of a new working class is taking place globally and it will not accept the crisis-ridden system for ever but once a generalised class offensive does begin revolutionaries have to part of it and to point out the errors of the past like 1916 as well as the programme for the future. This is not a programme that has simply been handed down, like the Ten Commandments from Mount Sinai, but is based on the material experience of the working class throughout its history.</p>
<p>With this episode history tells us that nationalism in all its forms, and wherever it is found, is against the working class. Today the reactionary nature of the nationalism we see around the world, but particularly in Eastern Europe (on all sides in the Ukraine conflict, for example), is obvious to many. Less so the supposedly progressive nationalism of the smaller nations, like Scotland and Catalonia, and even Kurdistan. Here, under the pressure of the economic crisis, many of the self-proclaimed left argue, just like Connolly that political independence from the larger state will be a step on the road to socialism. The events of 1916 demonstrate otherwise. National consciousness, the natural consciousness of the property-owners in any state, is for the capitalists. It is the antithesis of class consciousness, and without the latter, the fight for socialism is a dead letter. In a globalised capitalist world dominated by imperialism the notion of “independence” is an illusion. Every ‘nation state’ exists as part of a capitalist world economy where the necessity to generate profits and fall in with the demands of the world market ensures that ‘the nation’ is a class-divided society. In every national territory the struggle of the working class against exploitation by the capitalist class is the same everywhere. In war and in peace our enemy is not the working class of another place, but the exploiters at home. Those who put nation before class obscure this vital truth and side with our class enemy. As Marx wrote in the Communist Manifesto “Workers have no country” but we do “have a world to win”.</p>
<p>CWO</p>
<p>March 22 2016</p>
<p>[1] Before his execution he not only took the last rites from a Catholic priest but begged his Protestant wife to convert to Catholicism and bring up their children as Catholics. Like his fellow-conspirator Patrick Pearse he was not shy in talking the language of religious martyrdom. The consequences of this have been summed up by Liam Cahill in “The Forgotten Revolution: The Limerick Soviet 1919”.</p>
<p><a href="http://libcom.org/history/green-red-orange">“Connolly, in effect, played the Green Card. He opted for a Labour movement that appealed essentially to Southerners and Catholics. This might be justified on the basis that the majority of Irish people were Catholics and the Catholic working-class may have appeared to be more promising material for social revolution than their Protestant counterparts. But Connolly's decision finally excluded the possibility of a united, political movement of all Irish workers. It meant the equation, and ultimate subordination, of Southern Irish Labour to Irish nationalism.”</a></p>
<p>[2] James Larkin, also a syndicalist like Connolly, arrived in Belfast to organise the dockworkers and carters union in January 1907. Within three months it had 4500 members and when the employers sacked men for belonging to the union the workers struck. The strike was unique in that it was one of the few episodes in the history of Northern Ireland where workers on both sides of the political/religious divide fought together. So much so that they were condemned by the Ulster unionist bosses, and the leader of Sinn Fein, Arthur Griffiths! Class before nation indeed. However the defeat of the strike led to the bosses once again playing the religious card and when Connolly took over as union leader from Larkin he complained that he could only work within the Catholic areas. Larkin went to Dublin to form a new transport workers union which led in 1913 to the great Dublin Lockout. The defeat of this movement led Larkin to go to the United States to raise money to rebuild the union. In the USA he supported the Socialist Party and the IWW and announced his support for the Bolshevik revolution but was arrested in the post-war “Red Scare”. After a couple of years in gaol he was released to return to Ireland in 1923. Here he founded the Irish Workers’ League which soon superseded the Irish Communist Party to become the Comintern’s branch in Ireland. It had little success in the new Free State.</p>
</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-authored field-type-datetime field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><span class="date-display-single">Wednesday, March 23, 2016</span></div></div></div><div class="field-group-format group_tags field-group-div group-tags speed-fast effect-none"><div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-5 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/es/publications/documents">Documents</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-8 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/es/articles/imperialism">Imperialism</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/es/articles/social-classes">Social classes</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-9 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/es/articles/conflicts">Conflicts</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-10 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/es/articles/1914-18-world-war-i">1914-18: World War I</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-4 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/es/articles/british-isles">British Isles</a></div></div></div></div>Wed, 23 Mar 2016 16:57:48 +0000Cleishbotham30683 at http://www.leftcom.orghttp://www.leftcom.org/es/node/30683#commentsIl genocidio armeno del 1915http://www.leftcom.org/es/node/30180
<div class="field field-name-field-images field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="http://www.leftcom.org/files/armenain%20masacre%202.jpg"><img src="http://www.leftcom.org/files/styles/galleryformatter_slide/public/armenain%20masacre%202.jpg?itok=o9xfHgmw" width="469" height="312" /></a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><blockquote class="remark">
<p>Da Prometeo #13, giugno 2015</p>
</blockquote>
<p>L'articolo seguente è stato pubblicato in tedesco su <em>Sozialismus oder Barbarei</em>, la pubblicazione della nostra organizzazione sorella tedesca <em>Gruppe Internationaler Sozialistinnen</em> (GIS), nel 2010 e tradotto in inglese dai compagni britannici della CWO su <em>Revolutionary Perspectives</em> nello stesso anno. Ne pubblichiamo oggi una traduzione italiana, nel 100esimo anniversario dell'avvenimento.</p>
<p>Il genocidio e la cosiddetta “pulizia etnica” fanno parte della storia dell'imperialismo capitalista. I massacri degli armeni non solo sono ufficialmente negati dal moderno stato turco ma, come abbiamo visto, ogni menzione del genocidio è proibita. Ma più essi si ostinano a negare, più noi abbiamo il dovere di denunciare.</p>
<p>I nostri compagni tedeschi, tuttavia, non si sono limitati a raccontare una storia di brutalità da parte dei “barbari turchi”, ma hanno messo in luce – nel solco di Karl Liebknecht - il ruolo dello stato tedesco, ipoteticamente “civilizzato” (non c'è infatti un solo stato contemporaneo che possa sfuggire a un'accusa del genere): tutto ciò nella migliore tradizione del disfattismo rivoluzionario, motivo per cui sosteniamo il loro lavoro e gli diamo più ampia diffusione.</p>
<address>PCInt – Battaglia Comunista, maggio 2015</address>
<h2>Il genocidio degli armeni e le responsabilità tedesche</h2>
<p>“Qualcuno parla, oggi, dello sterminio degli armeni?” chiese Hitler qualche giorno prima dell'attacco tedesco alla Polonia, durante un discorso in cui, tra le altre cose, mise in chiaro il duro comportamento che avrebbe dovuto essere tenuto dalle squadre delle SS “Testa di Morto” nei confronti della popolazione civile. Una citazione interessante che dimostra come anche allora il genocidio armeno fosse largamente noto, e inoltre che esso servì - per nazionalisti fanatici quali Hitler - come esempio da seguire. Ciononostante, la verità storica riguardo agli eventi di 100 anni fa è stata e continua ad essere talvolta negata o, comunque, discussa come se fosse estremamente controversa: i libri di storia continuano ad essere falsificati e chiunque - da giornalista, per esempio - si limiti anche solo a menzionare il genocidio, va incontro a un duro sanzionamento, mentre molto spesso la stampa “progressista” va a rinforzare la negazione della storia con cadenza quotidiana.</p>
<p>In Germania, però, non si assiste tanto alla negazione del genocidio armeno, quanto al silenzio assoluto sul ruolo dell'esercito tedesco a riguardo – che ha ottime ragioni, come vedremo. In generale, qui, la tendenza dominante è di alzare le spalle a proposito di questo genocidio, così come con l'Olocausto, come si fa con un episodio storico increscioso.</p>
<p>La base più popolare per questo tipo di evasione dal fatto storico è stata fornita da Stephane Courtois nell'elenco delle sofferenze umane, consapevolmente “in ordine casuale”, che si trova nell'introduzione al suo <em>Il libro nero del comunismo</em>:</p>
<blockquote><p>L'Impero Ottomano si permise di lasciarsi andare al genocidio degli armeni, la Germania a quello degli ebrei, dei rom e dei sinti. L'Italia di Mussolini massacrò gli etiopi. I cechi ebbero difficoltà ad ammettere che il loro comportamento verso i tedeschi dei Sudeti nel 1945 – 46 non fu al di sopra di ogni sospetto...</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In questa maniera, invece di chiarire la connessione tra il massacro degli armeni e quello degli ebrei o di menzionare la partecipazione tedesca al primo, si diffonde ulteriormente - nel migliore dei casi - la pratica di mettere tutte le “catastrofi umane” sullo stesso piano.</p>
<h2>La Germania e il genocidio del 1915</h2>
<p>Nel gennaio 1916, stando a un'interrogazione al Reichstag tedesco di Karl Liebknecht,</p>
<blockquote><p>nell'Impero turco, nostro alleato, la popolazione armena viene cacciata dalle sue case e massacrata a centinaia di migliaia.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Liebknecht domandò di risponderne. La replica del capo del Dipartimento Politico del Ministero degli Esteri e Delegato del Kaiser, von Stumm, fu:</p>
<blockquote><p>La Cancelleria del Reich è a conoscenza del fatto che attività sediziose dei nostri nemici hanno costretto il Tribunale turco a ricollocare la popolazione armena di alcune aree dell'Impero turco, trasferendola in nuovi quartieri abitativi. A causa di alcune ripercussioni provocate da questa misura, c'è stato uno scambio di vedute tra i governi tedesco e turco. Ulteriori dettagli non possono essere comunicati.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Nella Prima Guerra Mondiale la Germania e la Turchia furono alleate. All'epoca del genocidio vi erano in Turchia molti tedeschi che ne furono testimoni oculari o ne sentirono parlare. Alcuni, anche, vi presero parte: qui ne diamo solo alcuni esempi. I piani di deportazione per gli armeni ebbero origine con Colmar Freiherr von der Goltz, che lavorava sin dal 1883 come istruttore e organizzatore militare nell'Impero ottomano, dove veniva trattato come un Ufficiale di Campo turco, con la qualifica esclusiva di “Golz-Pasha”. Nel 1913, poi, il commentatore tedesco Paul Rohrbach propose la deportazione come soluzione della “questione armena”.</p>
<p>Nel 1913 circa 800 ufficiali tedeschi, al comando del generale Liman, giunsero a Istanbul per preparare militarmente il loro futuro alleato. Alcuni di questi ufficiali presero parte alla pianificazione e all'esecuzione delle deportazioni.</p>
<p>Il generale tedesco Fritz Bronsart von Schellendorf, Maggiore Generale dell'Impero ottomano, giustificò le sue azioni criminali anche dopo la guerra. Scrisse nel 1919:</p>
<blockquote><p>L'armeno è come l'ebreo: una volta trovatosi al di fuori della sua patria, diventa un parassita che succhia la ricchezza del paese in cui si stanzia. Da ciò deriva l'odio che venne scaricato su di loro in forme medievali e che ha condotto al loro massacro <sup id="ref1"><a href="#fn1">(1)</a></sup>.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>I Giovani Turchi</h2>
<p>La rivoluzione dei Giovani Turchi del 1908 portò alle dimissioni di Abdul Hamid II e restrinse fortemente i poteri del Sultanato, senza abolirlo in via di principio. Sotto Abdul Hamid la popolazione armena soffrì dei pogrom ferocissimi: tra il 1894 e il 1896 migliaia di armeni vi trovarono la morte. A quell'epoca l'Impero ottomano era formato in larga parte da contadini e da un grosso esercito: il proletariato era estremamente circoscritto, ma la Rivoluzione vide l'affacciarsi sulla scena pubblica dei primi scioperi significativi. Questa “rivoluzione”, in ogni caso, fu portata avanti principalmente da gruppi di ufficiali. Il Comitato per l'Unità e il Progresso (ITC), formato nell'ultimo decennio del XIX secolo, ne fu politicamente coinvolto. L'insoddisfazione e l'opposizione dei Giovani Turchi nei confronti di Abdul Hamid si alimentò in prima battuta delle sconfitte militari e della perdita di territori, soprattutto nei Balcani ma anche <em>vis-à-vis</em> con la Russia. L'Impero ottomano aveva dichiarato bancarotta già nel 1875; la guerra russo-turca del 1877–78 causò perdite territoriali in Armenia e nei Balcani: con la decadenza dell'Impero e il collasso economico, la dipendenza della Turchia dall'aiuto straniero aumentò, soprattutto nei confronti della Germania. Nel gennaio del 1908 la ITC prevalse sugli altri partiti di opposizione e, in concomitanza con una pesante sconfitta nella Guerra Balcanica, prese il potere in maniera esclusiva tramite un colpo di stato. Talaat divenne Ministro dell'Interno, Enver Ministro della Guerra e Kemal Ministro della Marina: essi costituirono un triumvirato e rimasero ai vertici dello stato fino al 1918. L'ingresso nella guerra mondiale della Turchia a fianco della Germania e dell'Austria-Ungheria fu praticamente provocato dal triumvirato per fornire una base al suo dominio sulla popolazione, già risicato e ulteriormente eroso da un'incipiente carestia. La popolazione cristiana dell'Impero, in ogni caso, non poteva aspettarsi altro che persecuzione e massacri. Le loro originarie speranze verso la rivoluzione dei Giovani Turchi furono rapidamente spazzate via dai pogrom che infuriarono da ben prima del 1915. Dentro l'ITC, il panturchismo prevaleva sempre più sul tradizionale ottomanismo, che riteneva l'Islam la religione dominante nell'Impero, mentre le altre religioni erano esposte a una legislazione repressiva, come ad esempio a una tassa eccezionale. I non-musulmani, fino a poco prima del genocidio del 1915, non potevano svolgere il servizio militare, venendo perciò esclusi da posizioni-chiave nell'apparato statale ad esso collegate. Così, essi rimasero in buona misura isolati e, poiché non si erano armati e organizzati per un'autodifesa, furono esposti ai pogrom senza protezione alcuna.</p>
<p>Il panturchismo differiva dall'ottomanismo perché univa l'egemonia islamica alla nazione: la causa di tutti mali, della miseria e delle sconfitte andava cercata tra i cristiani, i greci, gli armeni e gli aramei; la “turchità” doveva imporsi nel mondo. Enver si espresse così nel 1915 al presidente della missione tedesca in oriente, il Dr. Lepsius:</p>
<blockquote><p>Consideri che i turchi sono 40 milioni. Se fossero uniti sotto un unico Impero, essi avrebbero la stessa importanza in Asia che la Germania ha in Europa <sup id="ref2"><a href="#fn2">(2)</a></sup>.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>A quel tempo, circa 9 milioni di turchi vivevano nell'Impero ottomano. Per costituire questo impero panturco, gli armeni dovevano essere spazzati via, poiché rappresentavano un ostacolo strategico a questo progetto di espansione nazionalista. È vero che i pogrom contro i cristiani non erano rari nell'Impero ottomano, ma nel 1915 fu superato tutto ciò che era successo prima. Anche nel 1914 in Anatolia occidentale furono perpetrati dei pogrom, principalmente contro i greci, per la maggior parte eseguiti dai <em>Teskalit-i Mahsura</em>, unità speciali organizzate dal Ministero della Guerra. Fino al 1916 circa 500.000 persone furono assassinate soltanto in quest'area, e altre migliaia deportate. Il “successo” in Anatolia occidentale incoraggiò gli assassini della classe al potere a commettere genocidio anche nei confronti degli armeni. L'ingresso nella guerra mondiale significava che si poteva uccidere la gente “in pace”: perlomeno, non era necessario prestare deferenza ad alcuno, visto che tutti potevano essere fatti passare per “vittime di guerra”. Dapprima, il 25 febbraio 1915, Enver Pasha ordinò il disarmo dei soldati armeni, che vennero organizzati in battaglioni di lavoro: molti di essi morirono, dozzine dei quali ammazzati. Il 24 aprile 600 intellettuali armeni furono deportati da Istanbul e uccisi. Fu allora che iniziò la vera “deportazione”. Prima furono costretti a lasciare i loro paesi gli uomini, poi le donne e i bambini; era proibito portare con sé alcunché. Gli armeni venivano raggruppati in lunghe colonne e fatti incamminare per lunghe marce, alla fine delle quali li attendeva quasi sempre la morte: i turchi, i curdi e i circassi che incontravano queste colonne le assaltavano, uccidendo e stuprando. Chi invece tentava di aiutare, veniva giustiziato. Le marce finivano nel deserto siriano o iracheno, dove i deportati venivano uccisi dalla sete, la fame e le malattie.</p>
<blockquote><p>Presso la gola di Kemach, vicino alla città di Erzurum, dove il fiume Eufrate taglia verso il territorio montuoso, la gente veniva legata a gruppi di cinque e gettata giù. In primavera, le acque di scioglimento portarono i corpi sin nella pianura, dove divennero preda dei malandati e sempre affamati cani dei villaggi. A Trabzon fu deportata solo una parte degli armeni, gli altri furono affogati, assieme ad alcuni greci: vennero caricati su dei barconi che venivano sospinti in mare, dove poi furono semplicemente affondati. Terre, animali, case, negozi e tutti i beni rimasti abbandonati dagli armeni furono assegnati ai loro vicini musulmani e agli ufficiali <sup id="ref3"><a href="#fn3">(3)</a></sup>.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Le vittime del genocidio furono probabilmente un milione e mezzo, o forse anche due milioni. La maggior parte degli assassini circolava liberamente dopo i processi tenutisi subito dopo la guerra ad Istanbul “su pressione” britannica. Anche in questa circostanza la Germania si distinse per aver dato rifugio ad assassini ricercati: ad esempio, Talaat Pasha nel 1921 viveva a Berlino da cittadino rispettato; venne ucciso successivamente dallo studente armeno Salomon Teilirian, la cui famiglia era stata vittima del genocidio.</p>
<h2>Miti kemalisti e interessi imperialistici</h2>
<p>Ma nemmeno le potenze dell'Intesa avevano un reale interesse nel portare alla luce il genocidio. Gli imperialisti britannici erano interessati soltanto a prendersi il pezzo più grande possibile della torta del disfatto Impero ottomano, e avevano bisogno di giustificazioni per farlo; lo stesso era per gli altri stati imperialisti: i loro interessi liberarono i governanti turchi dal fardello del genocidio. Dopo la proclamazione della Repubblica Turca nel 1923, al più tardi, si smise di parlare di quei fatti: le potenze vincitrici erano più interessate a una Turchia forte, “baluardo contro il comunismo”. Infatti, la “lotta di liberazione” sotto la leadership di Ataturk contro le potenze occupanti dipese in buona parte dalle unità <em>Tesiklat-i Mahusa</em>, le stesse che ebbero un ruolo decisivo nel genocidio: Ataturk stesso si interessò del rilascio dalle prigioni di quei pochi che vi erano finiti. Molti di quelli che si erano impadroniti di proprietà degli armeni temevano che i sopravvissuti potessero ritornare, perciò appoggiarono Ataturk e la “lotta di liberazione” con veemenza.</p>
<p>La classe al potere in Turchia reagisce con estrema suscettibilità ad accuse connesse al genocidio, poiché il suo dominio si basa esattamente sul mito della “lotta di liberazione”: far riferimento al genocidio significa mettere in discussione Ataturk e la sua Repubblica - costruita sull'espulsione o lo sterminio di altri popoli - e opporsi al kemalismo, dominante in vaste frange della sinistra turca.Come abbiamo detto, la storiografia turca non riconosce alcun genocidio verso gli armeni: la stragrande maggioranza degli autori e dei commentatori turchi ha sviluppato diverse “linee argomentative”. Una delle più popolari segue questo filo: fu una guerra e infatti vi furono vittime da entrambe le parti; altre asseriscono che gli armeni vennero deportati perché collaborarono con i russi durante la guerra; altre ancora calcolano quanti turchi persero la vita sui vari fronti e comparano le cifre; la leggenda più diffusa, addirittura, trasforma le vittime in carnefici.</p>
<p>Anche il dibattito diplomatico sul genocidio degli armeni serve più agli stati nazionali in competizione tra loro per conquistare posizioni politiche che per fare chiarezza. In questo cinico gioco di potere i rappresentanti delle classi dominanti tentano di interpretare e sfruttare gli eventi di un secolo fa nel senso dei propri interessi imperialistici.</p>
<p>Il genocidio degli armeni fu il risultato di una spinta nazionalistica all'espansione tipica dell'età dell'imperialismo: soltanto quando l'ordine imperialista sarà rotto in tutto il pianeta e la dittatura del capitale sarà finalmente tolta le vittime di questo assassinio di massa si vedranno riconosciuta giustizia.</p>
<p><a href="#ref1" id="fn1">(1)</a> F. Alsan e K. Bozay, <em>Die Grauen Wölfe heulen wieder</em> [Il lupo grigio ulula ancora], 1997, p.30</p>
<p><a href="#ref2" id="fn2">(2)</a> E. Seidel-Pielen, <em>Unsere Türken</em> [I nostri turchi], 1995, p.51</p>
<p><a href="#ref3" id="fn3">(3)</a> F. Alsan e K. Bozay, <em>cit.</em>, p.32</p>
</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-authored field-type-datetime field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><span class="date-display-single">Tuesday, February 9, 2016</span></div></div></div><div class="field-group-format group_tags field-group-div group-tags speed-fast effect-none"><div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-5 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/es/publications/prometeo">Prometeo</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-9 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/es/articles/conflicts">Conflicts</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-10 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/es/articles/1914-18-world-war-i">1914-18: World War I</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-4 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/es/articles/caucasus-and-anatolia">Caucasus and Anatolia</a></div></div></div></div>Tue, 09 Feb 2016 20:44:01 +0000webmaster30180 at http://www.leftcom.orghttp://www.leftcom.org/es/node/30180#commentsA cent'anni dalla Prima Guerra Mondialehttp://www.leftcom.org/es/node/30105
<div class="field field-name-field-images field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="http://www.leftcom.org/files/1915-01-01-world-war.jpg"><img src="http://www.leftcom.org/files/styles/galleryformatter_slide/public/1915-01-01-world-war.jpg?itok=WHXelnR8" width="231" height="312" /></a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><blockquote class="remark">
<p>Da Prometeo #13, giugno 2015</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="remark"><p>Pubblichiamo ampi stralci di un ottimo articolo dei compagni inglesi della CWO sul primo conflitto imperialistico mondiale. La versione completa, che contiene riferimenti specifici sulla situazione britannica, è pubblicata su Revolutionary Perspectives #4 e potete trovarla nella sezione inglese del sito.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><strong>La socialdemocrazia, la Prima Guerra Mondiale e la classe operaia in Gran Bretagna</strong></p>
<p>Per i marxisti laPrima guerra mondiale segna uno spartiacque nella storia del capitalismo. A differenza delle guerre precedenti, questa guerra ha coinvolto l'intero globo ed è stata il risultato diretto della rivalità imperialista tra le "grandi potenze", una rivalità che non è stata solo il risultato di politiche bellicose da parte di particolari governi, ma una conseguenza inevitabile del processo di accumulazione del capitale. Con l'inizio del ventesimo secolo, la concentrazione e centralizzazione del capitale avevano raggiunto proporzioni da monopolio e la concorrenza economica tra le imprese all'interno dei confini nazionali stava sempre più diventando concorrenza tra capitali nazionali, in cui gli interessi economici, politici e militari convergevano in un unico interesse: l'interesse dello Stato.</p>
<p>In breve, come Lenin sottolineò per primo, il capitalismo aveva raggiunto una nuova fase del suo sviluppo da cui non si sarebbe più potuti tornare indietro. Con le sue leggi economiche ormai operanti su scala mondiale, le cicliche crisi del sistema non potevano più essere risolte con i vecchi mezzi quali fallimenti, chiusure e accorpamenti di aziende. Da allora in poi erano necessarie svalutazioni molto più massicce del capitale, il tipo di svalutazione che può venire solo dalla distruzione in massa di capitale costante operata della guerra moderna.</p>
<p>Anche per la classe operaia, la Prima Guerra Mondiale segna uno spartiacque. Per chi ha occhi per vedere, ha rivelato l'impossibilità per il capitalismo di essere trasformato pacificamente e gradualmente in socialismo. Il movimento operaio si trovava di fronte all'assurdità dell'idea che le stesse forze espansive che avevano portato all'imperialismo capitalista avrebbero portato il capitale verso una sorta di sistema centralizzato mondiale, in cui la guerra sarebbe stata una cosa del passato. Pochi hanno scelto di confrontarcisi. Al contrario, quando nel 1914 la guerra scoppiò, la Seconda Internazionale crollò, perché la maggior parte dei partiti suoi affiliati abbandonarono ogni finzione di internazionalismo proletario.</p>
<p>In realtà, nonostante il suo impegno di fare "guerra alla guerra", nel periodo fino al 1914, la Seconda Internazionale non fu mai in grado di raggiungere un accordo su ciò che la classe operaia internazionale avrebbe dovuto fare nel sempre più probabile caso di una guerra inter-imperialista.</p>
<h2>La guerra imperialista e la Seconda Internazionale</h2>
<p>Solo una minoranza, associata alle figure di Lenin e Luxemburg, vedeva una tale guerra come un'opportunità per la classe operaia di rovesciare il capitale. Nel 1907, per esempio, avevano ottenuto che il seguente ulteriore paragrafo fosse aggiunto alla risoluzione sulla guerra adottata dal Congresso Socialista Internazionale riunitosi a Stoccarda:</p>
<blockquote><p>Nel caso in cui la guerra dovesse scoppiare, è suo (della classe operaia) dovere intervenire in favore della sua rapida fine e utilizzare con tutte le sue forze la crisi economica e politica creata dalla guerra per sollevare le masse e accelerare quindi la caduta del dominio di classe capitalista.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Però, come indicano le parole iniziali della frase, la maggior parte della Seconda Internazionale non considerava seriamente la possibilità che una guerra avvenisse realmente, né tanto meno la possibilità per la classe operaia di cogliere l'occasione per "accelerare la caduta del dominio di classe capitalista”.</p>
<p>Un aspetto fondamentale del pensiero socialdemocratico era la convinzione che la democratizzazione della società esistente avrebbe inevitabilmente portato il proletariato alla conquista del potere politico (in quanto si era ipotizzato che la classe operaia fosse maggioritaria in una società capitalistica avanzata) e quindi al socialismo. L'avvento del socialismo era visto come la logica conseguenza della rivoluzione democratica.</p>
<p>All’interno del partito socialdemocratico tedesco, la SPD, roccaforte della socialdemocrazia, questa era vista come una 'rivoluzione' che sarebbe avvenuta attraverso le urne; ciò, nonostante il sistema sostanzialmente antidemocratico della Germania sotto il Kaiser.</p>
<p>In realtà non vi erano prove convincenti del fatto che, prima o poi, chi deteneva il potere politico in Germania avrebbe dovuto tener conto della forza elettorale della classe operaia. Nel 1912 la SPD poteva proclamare di avere 110 seggi su 397 nel Reichstag, il risultato di 4,5 milioni di voti alle urne. Ma una cosa è che il capitale sia pressato a concedere riforme politiche, un'altra la conquista del potere da parte della classe operaia e il rovesciamento del capitalismo.</p>
<p>Ma quello che oggi sembra lampante non era così evidente a coloro che vivevano sotto regimi autocratici come quello della Germania guglielmina o della Russia zarista. L'istituzione della democrazia borghese, una sorta di sistema parlamentare con eventualmente una monarchia costituzionale, avrebbe comportato una rivoluzione nell’aspetto politico di questi stati.</p>
<p>Mentre una tale rivoluzione era inconcepibile in Russia, dove occorreva il rovesciamento violento dello zar, in Germania, capitalisticamente più avanzata, la trasformazione pacifica dello stato capitalista era vista come una possibilità concreta da parte della destra 'revisionista' della SPD.</p>
<p>Questo in realtà non ha comportato una divisione netta tra riformisti e rivoluzionari, almeno dal punto di vista della rivoluzione proletaria. La posta in gioco era la rivoluzione democratico-borghese, non quella socialista. Kautsky, per esempio, non riteneva che il sistema politico della Germania guglielmina avrebbe potuto essere trasformato pacificamente e in questo senso è stato un anti-revisionista. Arrivò tuttavia a teorizzare che le forze centripete del capitale internazionale avrebbero potuto portare ad un mondo capitalista 'super-imperialista' in cui le guerre sarebbero state inutili e che avrebbe fornito la base di partenza per il socialismo internazionale.</p>
<p>Implicitamente, il socialismo internazionale sarebbe stato istituito gradualmente e pacificamente, ma il pieno significato di tutto ciò non era chiaro. Per il momento - cioè fino al 1914 - la distinzione tra il programma massimo di lungo periodo (il socialismo) e il programma minimo (riforme immediate) consentiva ai socialdemocratici di conservare l'illusione che revisionisti, riformisti e rivoluzionari stessero tutti lavorando per lo stesso obiettivo finale.</p>
<p>Ma è stata un’illusione, alimentata dalla apparente unanimità delle forze della Seconda Internazionale contro la guerra e dalla loro capacità di mobilitare i lavoratori in manifestazioni contro la guerra.</p>
<p>Durante la prima guerra balcanica (1912), l'Ufficio Internazionale Socialista (ISB) produsse un manifesto contro la guerra in cui si riconosceva che:</p>
<blockquote><p>Il conflitto balcanico può diventare in qualsiasi momento un conflitto generalizzato [... e si faceva appello al proletariato europeo a] agire contro la guerra e contro la propagazione del conflitto balcanico ...con tutta la sua forza organizzativa, con l'azione di massa.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Ci furono manifestazioni di massa in Germania anche prima che il manifesto fosse pubblicato il 29 ottobre 1912. Il 20 ottobre 150.000 lavoratori avevano dimostrato a Berlino e dimostrazioni di massa si erano diffuse in tutta Europa. Il 17 Novembre, su richiesta della SPD, furono organizzate grandi manifestazioni di protesta in tutte le capitali europee in cui erano presenti partiti affiliati all'Internazionale.</p>
<blockquote><p>In questa occasione i rappresentanti dei vari partiti socialisti, Jaurès e Renner a Berlino, MacDonald, Vandervelde e Scheidemann a Parigi, hanno preso la parola avvertendo i governi che 'non avrebbero potuto dare fuoco all'Europa impunemente'... A Pré-Saint-Gervais, vicino a Parigi hanno dimostrato oltre 100.000 persone. Tutta la stampa socialista continuava a ripetere: 'Noi non siamo impotenti, perché i governanti non possono cominciare una guerra se si rendono conto che il popolo non la vuole'.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In questo contesto si tenne un congresso straordinario dell’ISB a Basilea. Secondo Jean Longuet (francese, destra socialista), il congresso era destinato ad essere</p>
<blockquote><p>una potente dimostrazione della unità del movimento socialista nella lotta contro la guerra, una espressione armoniosa della potenza dell’Internazionale.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Eppure, nonostante la retorica e l'atmosfera inebriante generatasi a Basilea, i socialdemocratici erano più lontani che mai dal concordare una strategia concreta nel caso che la guerra fosse effettivamente scoppiata. La maggior enfasi al congresso di Basilea fu messa sul prevenire la guerra facendo pressione sui governi. Alexandra Kollontaj (una menscevica) ha annotato così in una lettera le sue impressioni sul Congresso:</p>
<blockquote><p>Si sentiva la necessità di spaventare l'Europa, di minacciarla con lo 'spettro rosso', la rivoluzione, nel caso i governi avessero rischiato la guerra. E in piedi, sul tavolo che fungeva da piattaforma, io ho minacciato l'Europa ... E' stato tremendo, la protesta dei popoli contro la guerra, e la voce meravigliosa di Jaurès, e la meravigliosa e bianca vecchia testa del mio amato Keir Hardie, e il grande organo, e le canzoni rivoluzionarie, le riunioni ... Sono ancora stordita da tutto quello che ho vissuto ... <br/> La paura della classe dominante di una rivoluzione proletaria come conseguenza di una guerra mondiale si è dimostrata essere una vera garanzia di pace.</p>
<address>Manifesto di Basilea, 1912</address>
</blockquote>
<p>La maggioranza socialdemocratica non solo considerava la prospettiva della rivoluzione proletaria come uno strumento di minaccia contro i governi piuttosto che qualcosa per cui lavorare direttamente, ma a Basilea l’ISB aveva anche deliberato di intensificare la campagna contro la guerra da <em>"con una propaganda sempre più energica, con proteste sempre più ferme"</em>, che si dovevano estendere per includere, a fianco della classe operaia, anche la classe media e i pacifisti in generale. In altre parole, l'azione della classe operaia contro la guerra doveva essere limitata a manifestazioni e trasformata in un movimento populista. Qualsiasi riferimento al fatto che la guerra imperialista fosse intrinseca al capitalismo fu completamente respinto.</p>
<p>L’obiettivo esplicito dell’Internazionale era ora l'instaurazione di un capitalismo pacifico attraverso il disarmo e non del socialismo attraverso la rivoluzione. Di conseguenza, l’ISB respinse il seguente emendamento proposto della Luxemburg alla bozza del Manifesto di Basilea riguardo all’azione di massa.</p>
<blockquote><p>Tale azione deve essere rafforzata in forma e intensità come aumenta la minaccia della guerra, così che, nel caso della catastrofe finale, possa culminare in una decisiva azione di massa rivoluzionaria.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Allo stesso modo è rimasta inascoltata l'opposizione di Pannekoek, Radek e Lensch all’allineamento della classe operaia con la piccola borghesia pacifista, così come la loro critica che considerava utopica la politica dell’Internazionale di premere sulla borghesia per il disarmo.</p>
<p>Anche se l’ISB aveva continuato a chiamare i socialisti ad organizzare incontri e dimostrazioni fino all'inizio della guerra, una volta che questa politica di minacciare i governi con la rivoluzione fallì e la guerra infine scoppiò, il nazionalismo dimostrò di essere il più forte sentimento presente nelle fila della socialdemocrazia.</p>
<p>Quando ominciò la guerra, tra i parlamentari socialdemocratici dei paesi belligeranti solo i serbi votarono contro i crediti di guerra, mentre in Russia i deputati Menscevichi e Bolscevichi (con gran rabbia di Lenin) si astennero. Schorske, per i socialdemocratici tedeschi disse: «Alla fine è stato abbandonata la parola d’ordine <em>'Nè un uomo né un soldo per questo sistema',</em> per lo slogan suo rivale fin dal 1907: '<em>Nell'ora del pericolo non lasceremo la Patria vacillare'</em>». In Francia Guesde e in Belgio Vandervelde (leader del Partito Socialista e Presidente dell’ISB) si unirono ai consigli di guerra subito dopo l'inizio della stessa guerra. In Gran Bretagna Arthur Henderson e J.H. Thomas aderirono al governo Lloyd-George nel maggio 1915.</p>
<h2>La guerra imperialista e la classe operaia britannica.</h2>
<p>I marxisti rivoluzionari hanno in genere spiegato il sostegno di massa dato dalla classe operaia alla Prima guerra mondiale in termini di tradimento del socialismo da parte dei leader. Questo è strettamente legato a quanto avvenne in Germania, dove migliaia di giovani reclute, assicurate dalla leadership SPD che questa era una guerra di legittima difesa nazionale contro l'attacco dello zarismo reazionario russo, partirono per la guerra, cantando canzoni socialdemocratiche. In Gran Bretagna il Partito Laburista, a differenza dell’Indipendent Labour Party (ILP), era composto in gran parte di sindacalisti che in genere non avevano mai dichiarato di essere socialisti, oppure da Fabiani, che respingevano apertamente l'idea della rivoluzione proletaria e sostenevano che il socialismo avesse qualcosa a che fare con l'estensione del controllo dello stato sulla società (ovvero il capitalismo di stato).</p>
<p>In ogni caso la concezione marxista del socialismo come risultato della lotta di classe era un anatema per i laburisti che, parole di Engels, hanno agito politicamente come la coda del Partito Liberale, e l’idea che "i lavoratori non hanno patria” (Manifesto del Partito Comunista) non è mai entrata loro teste.</p>
<p>Per l'imperialismo britannico non c’era penuria di carne da cannone in questa classe operaia che "pensa alla politica in generale, nello stesso modo dei borghesi" (Engels, 1882). Dopo solo cinque settimane dall’inizio della guerra, 175.000 uomini avevano risposto alla <em>chiamata alle armi</em> di Kitchener. In tutto, il sistema volontario durò fino alla fine del 1915, portando 2,5 milioni di reclute. La maggior parte erano proletari e molti avevano lasciato posti di lavoro relativamente ben pagati per andare al fronte. Nel settore del carbone, per esempio, <em>... in 191.170, quasi un quinto della forza lavoro totale, si era unita all’esercito nel febbraio 1915</em>. Nei primi giorni, in ogni caso, vi era senza dubbio un entusiasmo popolare per la guerra, entusiasmo incoraggiato da sindacati e dirigenti laburisti che, non solo accettarono di sospendere le lotte durante la guerra, ma incoraggiarono i lavoratori a rischiare la loro vita. L'ampio sostegno per la guerra tra la classe operaia non può essere spiegato semplicemente in termini di un desiderio di avventura e di cambiamento per sfuggire alla monotonia del lavoro e della vita in casa. E neanche la disoccupazione è una risposta esaustiva, i volontari proletari infatti non provenivano esclusivamente dalle fila dei disoccupati. Visto che il 20 % della popolazione maschile in età militare (20-rispose volontariamente agli appelli "ad aiutare il paese in questo momento critico", è chiaro che i valori patriottici pervadevano la classe operaia inglese tanto quanto il resto della società. Il patriottismo faceva parte dell'ideologia imperialista: un’ideologia che, come disse successivamente Lenin, "penetra anche la classe operaia. Non c’è una muraglia cinese che la separa dalle altre classi" (<em>L'imperialismo, fase suprema del capitalismo</em>). Oggi questo può apparire ovvio, ma non era così evidente nell’agosto 1914. In primo luogo, nonostante l’uso da parte di Lenin dello slogan “i lavoratori non hanno patria”, non c'era alcun fermo principio anti-patriottico nella socialdemocrazia. Se non altro si assumeva che gli interessi della classe operaia rappresentassero gli interessi della nazione (nel senso della maggioranza della "popolazione"), indipendentemente dal fatto che 'la nazione' si stesse sempre più identificando con lo stato imperialista. Così Rosa Luxemburg potè ancora formulare in termini di "abbandono della patria" il suo attacco ai socialdemocratici tedeschi per la mancata opposizione alla guerra.</p>
<blockquote><p>Sì, i socialisti avrebbero dovuto difendere il loro paese in caso di grandi crisi storiche... il più alto dovere della Socialdemocrazia verso la sua patria era di evidenziare il carattere imperialista di questa guerra, di squarciare il velo di menzogne ​​politiche che acceca gli occhi del popolo. Era loro dovere parlare forte e chiaro per denunciare al popolo della Germania che in questa guerra vittoria e sconfitta sarebbero state ugualmente fatali, opporsi allo stato di assedio che imbavaglia la patria, chiedere che fosse il popolo da solo a decidere sulla guerra e la pace, richiedere una seduta permanente del Parlamento per il periodo della guerra, assumere un controllo vigile sul governo tramite il Parlamento, e sul Parlamento tramite il popolo, richiedere la rimozione immediata di tutte le disuguaglianze politiche, visto che solo un popolo libero può governare adeguatamente il suo paese, e, infine, di opporre il programma di Marx, di Engels e Lassalle alla guerra imperialista sostenuta dalle forze più reazionarie d'Europa. Quella era la bandiera che avrebbe dovuto sventolare per tutto il paese. Questo sarebbe stato veramente nazionale, veramente libero, in armonia con le migliori tradizioni della Germania e la politica internazionale di classe del proletariato.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Ecco in poche parole la concezione socialdemocratica di internazionalismo: un incontro di nazioni o popoli distinti. Non quindi il superamento del sentimento nazionalista all'interno della classe operaia attraverso la una lotta contro il capitale che si estenda oltre le frontiere nazionali.</p>
<p>Era un concetto che aveva le sue radici nella democrazia radicale e, in Gran Bretagna in particolare, in un periodo precedente dello sviluppo del capitale. Qui, ma soprattutto in Inghilterra, c’è stata una tradizione di patriottismo radicale all’interno della classe operaia.</p>
<h2>La risposta dei socialisti in Gran Bretagna</h2>
<p>La spaccatura che verificatasi all'interno della socialdemocrazia europea sulla questione del sostegno alla guerra ebbe solo una debole eco nel movimento socialista britannico.</p>
<p>Per il partito laburista britannico nel suo complesso, che non disse mai di essere socialista e che fu ammesso all’Internazionale solo nel 1908 con risoluzione speciale, non si pose mai la questione se opporsi alla guerra o no. Le discussioni avvennero tutte al di fuori degli ambiti del movimento operaio organizzato, all'interno dei circoli delle sette socialiste, senza mai raggiungere la maggioranza dei lavoratori. Ma ancora peggio del loro isolamento politico, era la confusione nella testa della maggioranza dei socialisti inglesi, cresciuti nella propria peculiare tradizione radicale Lib-Lab e per la maggior parte senza una minima adesione al marxismo o al concetto della necessità del rovesciamento politico del capitalismo. In breve, rispecchiavano la mentalità nazionalista e riformista della maggioranza della sinistra britannica, garantendo così che sfuggissero ai più questioni come la natura della guerra e la possibilità di una lotta di classe contro di essa.</p>
<p>[...]</p>
<h2>Alcune osservazioni conclusive</h2>
<p>Come abbiamo detto all'inizio di questo articolo, la Prima guerra mondiale segna una svolta storica sia per la borghesia che per il proletariato. Per capire il motivo per cui la maggioranza dei lavoratori in Gran Bretagna non vedeva alcun motivo per opporsi alla guerra, dobbiamo guardare più in là del tradimento operato dai leader politici socialdemocratici. Una tale svendita può avvenire solo quando vengono gettati a mare i principi fondamentali. Nonostante i suoi collegamenti con l'ILP, il Partito Laburista non era per il socialismo. Essendo parte di un'alleanza di sindacalisti ancora impegnati in accordi con i liberali per evitare che i conservatori fossero eletti nelle circoscrizioni della classe operaia, la maggior parte dei laburisti non era interessata alla formazione di un partito socialista di alcun tipo. La ragione di questo va cercata nella situazione materiale e nella particolare storia della classe operaia inglese. Marx ed Engels avevano denunciato la "nullità politica dei lavoratori inglesi" (Engels) causata dallo standard di vita relativamente elevato di cui essi godevano, data la dominazione del capitale britannico sul mercato mondiale. Il risultato era che i lavoratori in generale tendevano ad associare i propri interessi con quelli dello stato imperialista. Nel 1883, Engels scrisse in una lettera a Bebel che questa situazione sarebbe continuata fino a quando sarebbe durato il monopolio mondiale del capitale britannico. Allo stesso modo, fino a quando sarebbe continuato il movimento spontaneo della classe operaia contro la caduta del suo tenore di vita, movimento che i socialisti potevano tenere sotto controllo, il socialismo sarebbe rimasto "<em>un guazzabuglio confuso di sette, resti del grande movimento degli anni quaranta, e niente più".</em></p>
<p>Engels non contava sul partito laburista, lo vedeva infatti come quella peculiare forma britannica del riformismo la cui esistenza pregiudicava la formazione di un partito indipendente della classe operaia.</p>
<p>Dato il crollo della Seconda Internazionale nel 1914 e il fatto che i rivoluzionari di oggi non facciano parte di un movimento 'socialista' di massa, ma, al contrario, in qualunque paese si trovano sianno isolati dalla massa della classe operaia, potrebbe sorgere la domanda di quale significato abbia per noi oggi l'assenza di un chiaro periodo socialdemocratico nella storia della classe operaia britannica. In senso generale è vero che i rivoluzionari di oggi sono tutti nella stessa barca, arroccati in attesa di un cambiamento nella marea della passività della classe operaia di fronte alla crisi del capitalismo. Tuttavia ogni sezione 'nazionale' della classe operaia mondiale ha la sua eredità storica. Questa eredità in Gran Bretagna consiste in un partito che non ha mai fatto altro che difendere gli interessi dello Stato britannico e che si è sempre accodato ai partiti dichiaratamente capitalisti (prima liberali, poi Tory). E’ riuscito però a proclamarsi come il legittimo 'movimento operaio', al di fuori del quale ci sono solo sette.</p>
<p>Il fallimento dei laburisti ad operare per gli interessi dei lavoratori non è una novità: oggi questo ​​è solo più evidente. Il laburismo, e il sindacalismo gretto che gli si accompagna, sono ancora oggi per i lavoratori in Gran Bretagna le barriere che impediscono a questi ultimi di raggiungere una visione più chiara di dove stanno i loro veri interessi. E così era cento volte di più ai tempi della Prima Guerra Mondiale e degli sconvolgimenti rivoluzionari venuti nella sua scia. Questo non accadeva solo perché il partito laburista poteva apparire come qualcosa che non era (vista l’inclusione di forze 'socialiste' come l'ILP), ma anche perché proprio l'assenza di un partito socialdemocratico di massa in Gran Bretagna significava che le questioni politiche, di cui altrove si discuteva davanti a tutta la classe operaia, semplicemente per il Labour non erano tali, e spesso non lo erano neanche per l’ILP. Ciò non è insignificante. L'assenza di un ampio dibattito politico ha contribuito a rafforzare il laburismo e il generalmente basso livello di consapevolezza politica nella classe operaia in Gran Bretagna. Anche se i rivoluzionari sono sempre stati una minoranza all'interno dell'Internazionale, in tutti i dibattiti più importanti (se il socialismo potesse essere raggiunto gradualmente; se fosse corretto entrare nei governi borghesi; sulla differenza tra scioperi politici di massa e sindacalismo; sulla natura di una organizzazione politica rivoluzionaria della classe operaia; sulla questione di come opporsi alla stessa guerra imperialista) almeno questi problemi erano riportati e discussi di fronte a un vasto pubblico operaio. Così non fu in Gran Bretagna, dove le aspiranti frazioni politiche rivoluzionarie rimasero nella posizione di sette. Elementi di queste sette socialiste indicarono al movimento operaio, che cresceva quando il disagio materiale della guerra aumentò e quando lo stesso esempio della rivoluzione russa ispirò anche i lavoratori in Gran Bretagna, di guardare al di là del Labour per arrivare alla formazione del Partito Comunista della Gran Bretagna. Eppure, nella mente della maggioranza della classe operaia britannica il Partito Laburista èrimase 'il partito dei lavoratori', mentre il relativamente piccolo Partito Comunista divenne l’adattabile portavoce del Comintern quando la controrivoluzione prese piede in Russia. Colpisce anche il modo in cui questo partito prese di nuovo in mano la bandiera del radicalismo popolare negli anni trenta e quaranta, quando il gruppo Communist Party Historians, guidato da Dona Torr, e comprendente persone come Christopher Hill, produsse una serie di opere sotto il titolo di 'Storia del popolo', 'La nostra storia', 'La gente comune’ per rafforzare l'idea che la lotta di classe è una lotta di un popolo e quindi di una lotta nazionale. Fu rianimata la teoria di Norman Yoke per dimostrare che il compito della classe operaia inglese era, nelle parole di Dona Torr, "di vincere la battaglia della democrazia", una battaglia che si estende in un "ininterrotta tradizione rivoluzionaria inglese da John Ball a Tom Mann". E Christopher Hill, in un volume intitolato “La democrazia e il movimento operaio”, spiegava ai lettori che:</p>
<blockquote><p>Il marxismo ha sussunto ciò che ha valore nella teoria di Norman Yoke - il riconoscimento della basi di classe della politica, del profondo senso di inglesità della gente comune, della orgogliosa continuità delle loro vite, istituzioni e lotte con quelle dei loro antenati, la sua insistenza sul fatto che una classe dirigente possidente è, per la natura della sua posizione, fondamentalmente estranea agli interessi della massa del popolo.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Continuava poi sostenendo che la classe operaia deve presentarsi come un difensore della nazione. Molto comoda giustificazione per le buffonate del fronte popolare del Partito Comunista negli anni Trenta e per il suo invito ai lavoratori a partecipare alla Seconda guerra imperialista mondiale sotto la bandiera della lotta di popolo contro il fascismo.</p>
<p>Per i rivoluzionari oggi il significato della Prima Guerra Mondiale rimane che la classe operaia inglese è parte della classe operaia mondiale e 'la nostra storia' ci insegna che non abbiamo alcun interesse a sacrificare noi stessi per l’imperialismo. Il crollo della Seconda Internazionale nel 1914 ha segnato la fine di un'epoca; la fine di ogni possibilità di un'alleanza politica progressiva tra borghesia e proletariato. Nella fase imperialista del capitalismo non ci sono più guerre capitaliste progressive e non c'è spazio per il radicalismo popolare o il patriottismo ad esso associato. Ciò che ci mostra la Prima guerra mondiale è anche che la lotta di classe non finisce una volta che la guerra è dichiarata. Al contrario, come capì Lenin, una guerra imperialista a tutto campo implica lil manifestarsi di una crisi politica per la classe capitalista, in cui la durezza delle condizioni di vita, la morte e le distruzioni che la accompagnano forniscono la spinta materiale per lo sviluppo di un movimento operaio spontaneo contro la guerra e l'ordine politico esistente. Nel momento in cui questo secolo trascina il terzo ciclo di accumulazione del capitale alla sua inesorabile conclusione, la guerra mondiale è ancora tornata all'ordine del giorno della storia e i rivoluzionari devono affrontare la necessità di formulare una risposta. Certamente non possiamo aspettarci che la classe operaia si muova in massa allo scoppio della guerra. Se la testa dei lavoratori era satura di ideologia borghese nel 1914, quanto maggiore e più sofisticato è oggi il controllo del capitale sul pensiero oggi? Solo i sognatori credono che la presa ideologica del capitale sulla classe operaia possa essere incrinata unicamente dalla forza della propaganda rivoluzionaria. Fino a quando l’ordine esistente resiste al peso delle proprie contraddizioni materiali, la classe operaia in generale rimarrà insensibile alle idee rivoluzionarie. Nonostante decenni di crisi economica e nonostante l'emarginazione di ampi settori della classe operaia, i lavoratori delle metropoli capitaliste sono ancora relativamente benestanti. E’ possibile quindi che l'impulso materiale alla rivolta venga ancora una volta dalle privazioni della guerra. In ogni caso, la risposta dei rivoluzionari non sarà di sospendere le attività durante il corso della guerra, di predicare l'obiezione di coscienza o il pacifismo. Il loro compito sarà quello di lavorare per la continuazione della lotta di classe con l'obiettivo di trasformare la guerra tra gli Stati capitalistici in una guerra contro la propria borghesia, in preparazione di una lotta rivoluzionaria per una nuova società. Questa è la base per l'internazionalismo proletario, non il pacifismo né il patriottismo del Labour.</p>
</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-authored field-type-datetime field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><span class="date-display-single">Tuesday, February 2, 2016</span></div></div></div><div class="field-group-format group_tags field-group-div group-tags speed-fast effect-none"><div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-5 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/es/publications/prometeo">Prometeo</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-10 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/es/articles/1914-18-world-war-i">1914-18: World War I</a></div></div></div></div>Tue, 02 Feb 2016 21:44:46 +0000webmaster30105 at http://www.leftcom.orghttp://www.leftcom.org/es/node/30105#commentsZimmerwald: Lenin Leads the Struggle of the Revolutionary Left for a New Internationalhttp://www.leftcom.org/es/node/28598
<div class="field field-name-field-images field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="http://www.leftcom.org/files/looting%20burning%20Polish%20village%2C%20Sept%201915jpg.jpg"><img src="http://www.leftcom.org/files/styles/galleryformatter_slide/public/looting%20burning%20Polish%20village%2C%20Sept%201915jpg.jpg?itok=DTFCpyJb" width="500" height="289" /></a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>
One hundred years ago, on September 5-8th 1915 an international conference of forty or so anti-war socialists took place in the village of Zimmerwald in neutral Switzerland. The key issues at stake in the debate between the opposing political currents at Zimmerwald were to reverberate across Europe in the years ahead – and they still have implications for what we do today.</p>
<p>It was by then more than a year since the Second International had collapsed like a house of cards as its leading constituent parties joined in supporting the bellicose imperialist war aims of their respective ‘fatherlands’. For revolutionary Marxists, most of whom had struggled against revisionism before the war, who recognised that capitalism’s global imperialist war was a historical game-changer in that the objective conditions for socialism now existed, there was no question of the need for a new International which would hold firm to Marx’s dictum that the workers have no country and lead the struggle for socialism. From Trotsky who had written soon after the war started of the new International which must arise out of the present world cataclysm; the Dutch Tribunists associated with Pannekoek, Roland Holst, and Gorter whose <em>Imperialism, the World War and Social Democracy</em> reiterated that “<em>this war is the crucible from which the new International must be born”;</em> the splintered German Left from Borchardt’s Lichtstrahlen (<em>Rays of Light</em>) group, the Bremen Left around Johan Knief and Paul Frolich and of course Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg; the Social Democracy of Poland and Lithuania (also the party of Rosa Luxemburg and Jogisches) which had joined with the Left wing of the PPS and the Bund when the war broke out to try to organise a general strike against the war on an essentially revolutionary defeatist basis <em>(“The proletariat declares war upon its governments, its oppressors!”</em>)</p>
<p>Within this current some placed more importance than others on the urgency of establishing a new International which would openly confirm the betrayal of Social Democracy. They wanted to challenge its right to speak in the name of the working class as well as give political direction on how the struggles of the international working class can be unified into the revolutionary struggle for socialism. Hermann Gorter, for example, dropped out of political life for two critical years. Others, like Rosa Luxemburg, envisaged that the new International would be built after the war – or rather, after the working class struggle had brought it to an end[1]</p>
<p>Even amongst the internationalists there was confusion as to whether ‘war on war’ meant that the proletariat should be struggling for peace as a precondition for building socialism or, as Lenin most urgently insisted, that in struggling against the horrific costs of war, workers have no choice but to get rid of their own government, take matters into their own hands and embark on the revolutionary road to socialism.</p>
<p>Drawing on the experience of the Paris Commune and the 1905 revolution in Russia, he insisted on the likelihood of the imperialist world war itself creating a revolutionary situation where the working class, if it stuck to defending its own interests, would have to take power into its own hands and begin the worldwide struggle for socialism. <em>“Once the war has started , it is unthinkable to run away from it. One must go ahead and do the work of a Socialist. … One must go there and organise the proletariat for the ultimate aim, as it is Utopian to think that the proletariat will achieve its aim in a peaceful way. …”</em> (<em>Golos</em> 37/38 October 1914) From this perspective it follows that:</p>
<p><em>Turning the present imperialist war into civil war is the only correct proletarian slogan. It is indicated by the experience of the Commune, it was outlined by the Basle resolution (1912) and it follows from all the conditions of an imperialist war among highly developed countries. However difficult such transformation may appear at one time or another, Socialists will never relinquish. systematic, insistent, unflinching preparatory work in this direction once the war has become a fact.</em></p>
<p><em>Only on this road will the proletariat be able to break away from under the influence of the chauvinist bourgeoisie, and sooner or later, in one form or another, will it take decisive steps on the road to real freedom of peoples, and on the road to Socialism.</em></p>
<p><em>Long live the international brotherhood of the workers united against the chauvinism and patriotism of the bourgeoisie of all countries!</em></p>
<p><em>Long live the proletarian International, free from opportunism.</em> (<em>The War and Russian Social Democracy</em>; written October 1914, published November 1914)</p>
<p>During his exile in Switzerland Lenin battled on several fronts to get this perspective of proletarian internationalism, of preparing to turn the imperialist war into a civil war, accepted by the Party. First of all amongst Bolsheviks in exile abroad, some of whom thought it their duty to volunteer for the French army (a stance supported by Plekhanov, once regarded as the mainstay of Marxism in Russia). At the Berne Conference of RSDLP Groups Abroad in early 1915 Bolshevik groups from France opposed his call for revolutionary defeatism in favour of ‘the fight for peace’. There was a similar struggle within the Party inside Russia especially over the idea of ‘defeatism’ which militants like Shlyapnikov argued put workers off, but eventually the party on the ground saw that the line of work was to politically and practically prepare a revolutionary course for the working class as the toll of continuing the war weakened the Tsarist regime.</p>
<p>On the international front the task was essentially the same: countering the argument that ‘nothing can be done’ during wartime (especially Kautsky’s gem that the International is a peace time weapon but that after the war it will be revived as before); rallying the forces who were prepared to break the ‘social peace’ and call on workers to defend their own interests. In short, he was preparing the ground for a new International acting on the basis that workers owe no loyalty to the existing governments and for a line of work based on turning the imperialist war into a civil war. By 1915 the signs of growing war weariness were already in evidence. In defiance of martial law, street demonstrations against the cost of living broke out in Germany. From April strikes in Russia multiplied and became more political. In July the Petrograd Bolsheviks led a boycott of the War Industries Committees, set up by the regime to enlist workers into the war effort.</p>
<p>Even the old International’s lifeless International Socialist Bureau was drawn into approving ‘peace’ conferences. In January Social Democrats from neutral countries met in Copenhagen and issued an appeal to socialists in the belligerent states to act to stop the war. In February the ILP hosted a conference of ‘socialists’ from the Allied Powers presided over by Keir Hardie where the Bolshevik, Litvinov was prevented from reading an internationalist declaration.</p>
<p>The resolution adopted by the conference stated that the war was the product of the antagonisms produced by capitalist society, imperialism and colonial rivalry where every country had a share of responsibility but nevertheless passed a resolution on the necessity of continuing the war since a victory for Germany would extinguish liberty, national independence and faith in treaties. After the war they hoped for an end to secret diplomacy, the "interest of armaments makers" and international compulsory arbitration. The workers of the Allied countries are fighting a defensive war against the German and Austrian governments, not against the German and Austrian people, and would resist attempts to turn this into a war of conquests. The resolution specifically demanded the restoration of Belgium, autonomy or independence for Poland, and the resolution of all the national problems of Europe from Alsace-Lorraine to the Balkans on the basis of national self-determination.</p>
<p>In April a similar gathering of Social Democrats from the Central Powers socialists met in Vienna and passed resolutions dealing chiefly with relations after the war.</p>
<p>However, when the Italian and Swiss Social Democratic Parties proposed an anti-war meeting of workers’ groups irrespective of the role of ‘their country’ in the war, the ISB did not want to know. They decided to go ahead anyway and call a conference of all socialist parties and workers’ groups <em>which are against civil peace, which adhere to the basis of class struggle, and which are willing, through simultaneous action, to struggle for immediate peace …</em> In the organisational sense Zimmerwald was outside the remit of the rotten Second International. Politically, however, there was no intention to undermine Social Democracy. When Zinoviev proposed that the purpose of the forthcoming conference should be to organise around a clear revolutionary line and prepare for a clear break with the old International he was given short shrift. Still, Lenin recognised an opening for revolutionaries to get a hearing, expand their influence and in the process consolidate the forces necessary to create a new International. In the months running up to the conference there was intensive correspondence and discussion amongst the Left on the key points they needed to include in a joint statement on the proletariat and the war. Both Radek and Lenin wrote draft resolutions.</p>
<p><em>Alexandra Kollontai organised the participation of the Swedish and Norwegian left Socialists. The Marxist group around the Dutch paper <strong>De Tribune</strong> (The Tribune) was contacted.</em></p>
<p><em>The Bolsheviks published a pamphlet in German for circulation to delegates … It contained Lenin and Zinoviev’s article <strong>Socialism and War</strong>, as well as the Central Committee and Bern conference resolutions. It also included the Bolsheviks’ 1913 resolution on the national question, an area where the Russian revolutionaries had differences with many of their left allies.<strong>[2]</strong></em></p>
<p>This last issue was a bone of contention which was never resolved before the formation of the 3rd International. However in the run-up to the Zimmerwald meeting Lenin had to concede to the majority. In the pre-conference discussions over the wording of the statement the Left would present, the majority of the eight delegates preferred Radek’s draft to Lenin’s. The final version (below) makes no reference to oppressed and oppressing nations.</p>
<p>This was not the stumbling bloc for the majority who could not tolerate even a watered down version of revolutionary defeatism. The Left’s resolution was rejected. The Zimmerwald Manifesto which has come down in history was the outcome of a compromise, largely drafted by Trotsky ­– who at this point was amongst <em>“the vacillating elements”</em> editing <em>Nashe Slovo</em> _("Our Word")_ in Paris under the slogan of "peace without indemnities or annexations, peace without conquerors or conquered." Nevertheless the Left signed it since they were able to add a rider regarding its limitations. In September 1915 Lenin was able to describe Zimmerwald as ‘the first step’ which … <em>for all its inconsistency and timidity</em> marks … <em>a real struggle against opportunism, towards a rupture with it</em>.[3]</p>
<p>So it seemed. In the event the biggest step forward was that the internationalists for the most part had come together and organised independently. Before leaving Zimmerwald they had set up their own Bureau of the Zimmerwald Left, composed of Lenin, Zinoviev and Radek. The documents they had presented to the Congress were published in <em>Internationales Flugblatt</em> and in 1916 there was a short-lived journal <em>Vorbote (Herald)</em> which was intended to be a forum for debate within the Left. During 1916 the crisis caused by the war and predicted by Lenin sharpened throughout Europe. The gulf between the Zimmerwald majority, who would not make a clean break away from Social Democracy, and the Left became a chasm. After the February revolution in Russia Lenin argued that “the Zimmerwald bog can no longer be tolerated” and that the need now was for the immediate founding of a “new, proletarian International” “consisting only of Lefts”.</p>
<p>The Zimmerwald conference is not among the World War One events commemorated by the likes of David Cameron or Prince Charles: ‘tributes’ designed to perpetuate myths about ‘the nation at war’. Even so, there are myths being spun by the capitalist left about the significance of Zimmerwald for socialists and the working class today.</p>
<p>First amongst them is the notion that ‘Zimmerwald’ as a whole is an example to follow today. In essence this means refusing to accept that social democracy, including Labour, is fundamentally a bulwark of capitalism and an obstacle in the way of independent working class struggle which is the only path that can lead to the revolutionary struggle for socialism which means the overthrow of the existing state. The point about the Zimmerwald Manifesto is that <strong>at the time</strong> it was seen as a step towards a complete break with social democracy. Today we know that the majority never made that break. However, it is almost laughable to see the distortion of history being pedalled by <em>Counterfire</em> – whose members engage in just about every cross-class protest movement going, notably the Stop The War Coalition – whose article on Zimmerwald tells us:</p>
<p><em>The [resulting] “Zimmerwald Manifesto” helped inspire a mass movement of antiwar and socialist activists across the warring countries of Europe. Finishing: The ideals of Zimmerwald became a source of inspiration for a growing movement of militant action which prepared the revolutions of 1917 and 1918.</em> John Riddell, <em>Counterfire</em> 31.8.2015 www.counterfire.org</p>
<p>This is disingenuous from someone who has made a close study of Zimmerwald and Lenin’s role in the movement to create the Third International. As if the struggle for communism, the overthrow of the capitalist state, the Bolsheviks, the Spartacists, the October Revolution and the working class revolutionary wave which brought an end to world war were the produce of militant action by a bunch of activists. However absurd, this is a convenient myth which can be used to justify almost any reformist protest (“militant action”) as the road which in the past “prepared the revolutions of 1917-18” and which today … well, as one ‘No Glory In War’ post puts it, the Zimmerwald anniversary can be used <em>to promote peace and international co-operation</em> (sic).</p>
<p>For all those would-be revolutionaries today who see only the counter-revolution in Russia and place the blame for it on the shoulders of Lenin and the Bolshevik Party it’s time to acknowledge the significance of his initiating the Zimmerwald Left and for standing up for proletarian internationalism; the revolutionary struggle for socialism which inevitably means confronting and overthrowing the capitalist state. Lenin argued for no truce in the class war (no burgfrieden, no kowtowing to state of emergency regulations, acquiescing in ‘civil peace’): “turn the war into a civil war”. For revolutionaries today in the face of capitalism’s wars it is not a question of simply repeating formulas from the past whatever the situation. But the same principle of calling on the working class not to sacrifice their own interests for ‘national defence’ or the ‘war effort’ remains. We have to continue urging the working class to carrying on defending their own interests, reminding them that workers have no country and that the only war worth fighting is the class war.</p>
<p>Above all, the significance of Zimmerwald is that it was a step towards the creation of a new International. In the end, perhaps inevitably, it was too little too late. The real significance of Zimmerwald for revolutionaries today is not that the international working class does not need an international revolutionary party. Quite the opposite, a party with a clear and unanimously agreed programme needs to be in existence before the working class is once again faced with the practical question of how to get rid of capitalism. Not a token nod to internationalism, such as Camille Huysmans described in 1904 when he took office as International Secretary of the Second International <em>"no more than a letter-box and a postal address, a mere medium of communication, without power and without real influence.”</em> The future international party will play a key political and organisational role in the world working class revolution.</p>
<p><em>ER</em></p>
<p><strong>The Resolution of the Zimmerwald Left</strong></p>
<p>The World War, which has been devastating Europe for the last year, is an imperialist war waged for the political and economic exploitation of the world, export markets, sources of raw material, spheres of capital investment, etc. It is a product of capitalist development which connects the entire world in a world economy, but at the same time permits the existence of national state capitalist groups with opposing interests.</p>
<p>If the bourgeoisie and the governments seek to conceal this character of the World War by asserting that it is a question of a forced struggle for national independence, it is only to mislead the proletariat, since the war is being waged for the oppression of foreign peoples and countries. Equally untruthful are the legends concerning the defence of democracy in this war, since imperialism signifies the most unscrupulous domination of big capital and political reaction.</p>
<p>Imperialism can only be overcome by overcoming the contradictions which produce it, that is, by the Socialist organisation of the advanced capitalist countries for which the objective conditions are already ripe.</p>
<p>At the outbreak of the war, the majority of the labour leaders had not raised this only possible slogan in opposition to imperialism. Prejudiced by nationalism, rotten with opportunism, at the beginning of the World War they betrayed the proletariat to imperialism and gave up the principles of Socialism and thereby the real struggle for the everyday interests of the proletariat.</p>
<p>Social-patriotism and social-imperialism, the standpoint of the openly patriotic majority of the formerly Social-Democratic leaders in Germany, as well as the opposition-mannered centre of the party around Kautsky, and to which in France and Austria the majority, in England and Russia a part of the leaders (Hyndman, the Fabians, the Trade-Unionists, Plekhanov, Rubanovich, the Nasha Zarya group) confess, is a more dangerous enemy to the proletariat than the bourgeois apostles of</p>
<p>imperialism, since, misusing the banner of Socialism, it can mislead the unenlightened workers. The ruthless struggle against social-imperialism constitutes the first condition for the revolutionary mobilization of the proletariat and the reconstruction of the International.</p>
<p>It is the task of the Socialist parties, as well as of the Socialist opposition in the now social-imperialist parties, to call and lead the labouring masses to the revolutionary struggle against the capitalist governments for the conquest of political power for the Socialist organisation of society.</p>
<p>Without giving up the struggle for every foot of ground within the framework of capitalism, for every reform strengthening the proletariat, without renouncing any means of organisation and agitation, the revolutionary Social-Democrats, on the contrary, must utilize all the struggles, all the reforms demanded by our minimum program for the purpose of sharpening this war crisis as well as every social and political crisis of capitalism of extending them to an attack upon its very foundations.</p>
<p>By waging this struggle under the slogan of Socialism it will render the labouring masses immune to the slogans of the oppression of one people by another as expressed in the maintenance of the domination of one nation over another, in the cry for new annexations; it will render them deaf to the temptations of national solidarity which has led the proletarians to the battlefields.</p>
<p>The signal for this struggle is the struggle against the World War, for the speedy termination of the slaughter of nations. This struggle demands the refusal of war credits, quitting the cabinets, the denunciation of the capitalist, anti-Socialist character of the war from the tribunes of the parliaments, in the columns of the legal, and where necessary illegal, press, the sharpest struggle against social-patriotism, and the utilisation of every movement of the people caused by the results of the war (misery, great losses etc.) for the organisation of street demonstrations against the</p>
<p>governments, propaganda of international solidarity in the trenches, the encouragement of economic strikes, the effort to transform them into political strikes under favourable conditions.</p>
<p>Civil war, not civil peace – that is the slogan!</p>
<p>As against all illusions that it is possible to bring about the basis of a lasting peace, the beginning of disarmament, by any decisions of diplomats and the governments, the revolutionary Social-Democrats must repeatedly tell the masses of the people that only the social revolution can bring about a lasting peace and the emancipation of humanity.</p>
<p><strong><em>Note</em></strong>_: This draft resolution was signed by two representatives of the Central Committee of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party (Zinoviev and Lenin), a representative of the Opposition of the Polish Social-Democracy (Radek), a representative of the Latvian province (Winter), a representative each of the Left Social-Democrats of Sweden (Hoglund) and Norway (Nerman), a Swiss delegate (Platten), and a German delegate. On the question of submitting the draft to the_</p>
<p><em>commission, 12 delegates voted for (the eight mentioned above, two Socialist-Revolutionaries, Trotsky, and Roland-Holst) and 19 against.</em></p>
<p>[1] <em>Either the International will remain a refuse heap after the war, or its resurrection will begin on the basis of the class struggle from which alone it draws its vital forces. … Only by means of an ‘excruciatingly thorough denunciation of our own indecision and weakness’, of our own moral fall since August 4th, can rebuilding of the International begin. And the first step in this direction is to take action for the rapid termination of the war and for the preparation of a peace in accordance with the common interest of the international proletariat.</em> [‘Rebuilding the International’, Die Internationale, no.1, 1915 [Rosa Luxemburg Internet Archive (marxists.org) 2000] .</p>
<p>[2] <em>Lenin’s Struggle for a New International</em>, Documents, ed. John Riddell, Monad Press</p>
<p>[3] Available on www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/cw/index.htm#volume21</p>
<p>Photo at top: Looting and burning Polish village, September 1915</p>
</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-authored field-type-datetime field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><span class="date-display-single">Tuesday, September 8, 2015</span></div></div></div><div class="field-group-format group_tags field-group-div group-tags speed-fast effect-none"><div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-5 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/es/publications/documents">Documents</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-8 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/es/articles/imperialism">Imperialism</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/es/articles/proletarian-revolution">Proletarian revolution</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-10 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/es/articles/1914-18-world-war-i">1914-18: World War I</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-6 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/es/articles/rosa-luxemburg">Rosa Luxemburg</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/es/articles/vladimir-lenin">Vladimir Lenin</a></div></div></div></div>Tue, 08 Sep 2015 11:59:17 +0000Cleishbotham28598 at http://www.leftcom.orghttp://www.leftcom.org/es/node/28598#commentsMay 1915: Italian Entry into World War One and Internationalist Oppositionhttp://www.leftcom.org/es/node/27215
<div class="field field-name-field-images field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="http://www.leftcom.org/files/WW1Italy.jpg"><img src="http://www.leftcom.org/files/styles/galleryformatter_slide/public/WW1Italy.jpg?itok=OI7GROdW" width="397" height="312" /></a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>
<em>Today (May 23) is the one hundredth anniversary of the Italian entry into the First World. To commemorate it we are publishing two documents of the internationalist opposition to that war in Italy written by Amadeo Bordiga. It is introduced by a brief essay on the events of 1915 which cover not only the equivocation of Italian imperialism but other commemorative myths such as those surrounding the Gallipoli campaign (which took place a month earlier).</em></p>
<p><strong>Misremembering Gallipoli</strong></p>
<p>The official World War One centenary commemorations continue to dribble along. At the back end of last year we were treated to the gradual filling up of the Tower of London’s moat in a sea of precisely 888,246 ceramic red poppies. Each one, the official blurb informs us, <em>“represented a British military fatality during the war”</em>. It’s not clear where that very exact figure comes from.[1] Very clearly however, the agenda is a nationalist one, conjuring up the ‘good old days’ of the British Empire. The official EU line that the centenary is about celebrating the integration of today’s European states which means that an inter-European war can never happen again is lost on the British ruling class. In an outrageous play on the myth of empire loyalty, the Department of Culture, Media and Sport’s <em>Guide to Engaging Local Communities</em>, which supplies a ready made agenda for anyone involved in organising commemorations, asserts that: <em>“The First World War saw servicemen from India and the West Indies to Australia and Canada fighting together for the nation.”</em> That’s not quite the spin the Australian and New Zealand ruling class put on the next event in the commemorative calendar: the anniversary of 70,000 or more Allied troops landing on Turkey’s Gallipoli Peninsula on 25th April 1915. Those troops included French, Indian, Irish, Canadian and the newly-formed Australian and New Zealand Army Corps [ANZAC] which has given its name to Anzac Day in Australia and New Zealand. This is now the prime official occasion for reinforcing nationalism under the banner of honouring those who have died for their country, as opposed to the British Empire. Just as in the UK, nationalism has strengthened as the working class has lost ground to capital. In the late 1960s, when opposition to the Vietnam War, and Australian participation in it, was at its height Anzac Day had almost died its own death. However, in recent years the official rituals have become more and more elaborate. This year record numbers attended the dawn ceremonies in Australia and around ten thousand Antipodeans travelled to the jamboree at Gallipoli itself. Whilst the British sent Prince Charles and son Harry to represent the British Commonwealth (nearest thing to the old Empire) this didn’t get in the way of the official script that Gallipoli marked the ‘coming of age’ of Australia and New Zealand as independent nations. In truth, despite the different slants, all these state-sponsored commemorations are designed to reinforce nationalism by playing on the “all in it together” theme. <em>Yes</em>, they tell us, <em>it is unfortunate that millions of soldiers were blown to bits or seriously injured in this industrial-scale warfare between the Great Powers for control over territory</em>; and <em>we have to admit that the top brass sometimes made mistakes; we can even accept that some of the men who refused to fight were not simply cowards ­– but we’ve moved on. Let’s leave the rights and wrongs of this for historians to debate</em>. Beyond it all, the overriding message is that the class society we live in is a ‘nation’ which, like a family, inevitably has its domestic tiffs, but who nevertheless share the same history. In this scenario ‘stuff happens’, including the first global war in history which ‘got us to where we are today’ and other banalities such as the blurb quoted above which gushingly tells us, <em>“We want people to find out how the First World War shaped our society and continues to touch our lives at a personal level, in our local communities and as a nation.”</em> It is within this seemingly commonplace framework that thousands of local world war one projects are being awarded government grants. In every other respect austerity is the order of the day, but when it comes to state handouts for war commemorations money is no object.[2]</p>
<p>For the capitalist class in the UK this is money well spent. Working class loyalty to the state is being reinforced just as the global economic crisis is undermining the strength of even the most powerful states. Meanwhile the people who live off nothing but profit in one shape or another constitute an international class of parasites who share the need to preserve the system to which they owe their wealth even as the competition between them intensifies. Their system, which encompasses the globe, has been kept afloat by the creation of trillions of dollars of fictitious capital… but the crisis of fewer and fewer ‘investment opportunities’ for the similar pile of new capital amassed by the likes of <em>Apple</em> is only getting worse. In short, not for the first time in history, world capitalism is facing existential crisis. Profit rates and investment opportunities cannot revive unless there is a massive devaluation of capital. Restructuring, globalisation and the transfer of much of the world’s production to areas of cheap wage labour have not solved the problem. Wage workers the world over, whose labour beyond the value of their wages is the only source of new wealth, face the prospect of further ‘sacrifices’ as this crisis extends way beyond simple ‘bread and butter’ issues to the internecine struggle between the world’s powers to hold on to or increase their share in the global economic pie. We may live in a post-colonial world but sharpening imperialist conflict which endangers the lives and livelihoods of ‘ordinary people’ is a fact for anyone with eyes to see.</p>
<p>World War One marked a turning point. Having encompassed the entire world and created the material foundations for human beings to live and work together in prosperity and harmony, capitalism and its drive for profit no longer serve any useful function for humanity. On the contrary, in a world carved up by imperialism, the inbuilt cyclical crisis of capitalism inevitably returns with greater intensity and plays out on all fronts: military, political as well as economic . This is where we are today. However, as we follow the centenary commemorations of that ‘great war’ we would do well to remember that history is written by the victor and in this case the victor was capitalism. We are now tracing 1915 but it is worth reminding ourselves that, despite the shock of the collapse of the Second International in 1914, on the ground in workplaces and working class communities there was still the backbone of a potentially mass socialist movement: workers who had believed that the working class response to the capitalists’ war would be the start of the struggle for socialism. Even as workers were enrolled en masse in the opposing capitalist armies a handful of revolutionary marxists, spearheaded by Lenin, began to work for the creation of a new, proletarian International. The starting point for this was the insight of the <em>Communist Manifesto</em> that “the workers have no fatherland” – especially now that capitalism had entered a new epoch of “imperialist convulsions” where the working class has no common cause with the bourgeoisie as it might have had in previous national wars against “absolutism and feudalism”. Nationalism is still a potent weapon used by the ruling class to blind workers the world over from seeing that they share the same interest – which is fundamentally to unify to get rid of the class system which exploits them.</p>
<p>No matter that Gallipoli and the whole of the Dardanelles campaign was a complete failure which ended at the turn of the year with the ignominious evacuation of 105,000 troops; no matter that the hero of the British establishment, Winston Churchill [whose brainchild the venture is said to have been] was obliged to resign as ‘First Sea Lord’; indeed, no matter that between them Allied and Turkish ‘casualties’ amounted to more than half a million men,[3] In each country Gallipoli has been turned into an icon of nationalism, of sacrifices made in the service of the current-day capitalist state. Yet, beyond the pantomime a more critical observer might ask young Australian and New Zealand workers today: what did they, who died in their thousands, have to gain from this campaign which marked the “coming of age of the nation”? What did it matter to those working class soldiers that in 1919 their loyalty to ‘the nation’ was rewarded by the Australian capitalist state being granted German New Guinea or New Zealand German Samoa. These are the tin-pot acquisitions of newly-arrived imperialist states which mean nothing to the working class who gained nothing; not even the communal right to shoot pigeons.[4]</p>
<p><strong>Italy enters the War</strong></p>
<p>Away from the Gallipolis, VE days, D-days and the celebration of both world wars as nationalist jamborees, the reality of 1915 was anything but glorious. Already millions of workers in uniform had lost their lives as they became cogs in the machine of industrial warfare in the service of capitalist land-grabbing and struggle for power. By June, on the trench-littered Western front alone the battles of Mons, Marne, Ypres had already brought a combined casualty list for the UK, France and Germany of nearly three and a half million: lives expendable in the service of capital. This was the war that Italian imperialism joined in May 1915, having hesitated as to which side could best serve its interests and fearful that the working class, whose struggle had reached insurrectionary proportions in 1914, would continue its anti-war stance and rise up again. Of all the belligerent states, the ruling class of the recently unified Italian state was the most divided and even after Italy joined the war a substantial section objected to the country’s involvement, notably the Catholic Church and Giolitti’s Liberals. Despite being a long-standing member of the Triple Alliance with Germany and Austria-Hungary the Italian Prime Minister, Antonio Salandra, pronounced the Austro-Hungarian ultimatum to Serbia an act of aggression and declared Italy free of its alliance obligations. Italy was now officially neutral, although as Bordiga points out, this did not stop it from sending an occupying force to Albania to take hold of territory promised by the terms of that treaty. Whilst it is true that it was harder to sell the idea of joining a war on the side of Austria to the general populace, especially in northern Italy[5], this was not the only reason for Salandra’s initial reticence about joining the war. Declaring neutrality bought time for Italian capital to decide where it had to gain most, to better prepare militarily, as well as work on what today would be called “hearts and minds”– i.e. preparing workers to accept that this was a war worth fighting.</p>
<p>In the first year of war, both sides — the Central Powers and the Entente, as the British-French-Russian alliance was known — attempted to recruit neutral countries like Italy, Bulgaria, Romania and Greece, to join the war on their side. At the end of the day it was the prospect of gaining more territory and raising Italy’s status from a minor to a great power that led Salandra to sign the secret Treaty of London on 26 April 1915.[6] The condition was that Italy must join in the fighting and declare war on Austria-Hungary within a month. Salandra kept to the condition and on 23 May war against Austria-Hungary was announced. (Although not for another year against Germany.) In fact the Entente would never have been able to carry out their side of this bargain amongst thieves since part of the gains promised to Italy depended on their victory on the Gallipoli peninsula. In any case at the end of the war the USA decided that Italy was getting too big for its boot and refused to let Italy have anything like the agreed share of the spoils.</p>
<p>This, of course, would be of no benefit to the working class. In the run-up to 23 May, the main concern of the Italian bourgeoisie was how to persuade workers to support their war. Unlike most of Europe’s Social Democratic parties outside of Russia, the Italian Socialist Party’s (PSI) response to the war was to firmly oppose it. Even the ‘moderate’ Turati talked of revolutionary insurrection while the PSI launched a manifesto calling on the proletariat to prepare itself for a new “test of strength” and <em>Avanti,</em> the party newspaper edited by Benito Mussolini, cried <em>“Down With the War”.</em> All that changed when it came to a question of war alongside France:</p>
<p><em>All the revolutionary verve of our socialists was spent in considering the fact that Germany … was not… France (and) thus in defining the difference between a war of “aggression” and a war of “defence”, in fact accepting the very logic of imperialism …<strong>[7]</strong></em></p>
<p>It is fairly well known how Mussolini changed his stripes and betrayed the socialist cause by making propaganda for Italy joining the war on the side of the Entente (who financed his new paper <em>Il Popolo d’Italia</em>). He was expelled from the PSI for this but the issue of whether or not the war could now be regarded as a ‘just war’ was dodged. Some members of the PSI, including later stalwarts of <em>l’Ordine Nuovo</em> like Gramsci and Togliatti, even resigned from the party in support of Mussolini’s pro-war position. The remaining majority were left with Lazzari’s wonderfully empty phrase of ‘neither support nor sabotage’ while Turati on the right called for “no alienation from the nation”. The PSI parliamentary deputies were also never tested: they could save their ‘socialist’ face by simply aligning themselves with the majority of deputies in the chamber who were also ‘not in favour’ of the war. As for the unions’ pledge to call a general strike if war was declared, in the event that did not happen and any anti-war initiatives were left to local initiatives. The PSI as a whole was demonstrating its loyalty to capitalism. Only the revolutionary Marxists clearly condemned the war as imperialist and saw that the working class had to fight for its own interests independent of the so-called ‘nation’. In effect it was now a fraction inside the PSI which in its own way was obliged to take the road towards the formation of a new International. The two articles, “We are Standing Firm” and “The Fait Accompli” which follow this introduction were written by Amadeo Bordiga just as Italy entered the war in 1915 as a contribution to that fight. <strong>ER</strong></p>
<p><strong>We Are Standing Firm</strong></p>
<p>From no. 35 of <em>Il Socialista</em>, Naples, 22.5.1915</p>
<p>War it is. As we have predicted many times, we socialists are now facing a hypocritical appeal for national solidarity in the name of the country being in danger.</p>
<p>However, we belong to those socialists whose internationalist convictions do not allow for patriotic illusions. So, even if we believed the appeal from our enemies of yesterday was honest and sincere; if we also thought the national government to be blameless for the war; even if we admitted the good faith and the impartiality of all those who advocate intervention; despite everything we would remain, in the name of our principles and our beliefs, resolute defenders of the class struggle which, by pitting the slaves against the oppression of the bosses is the only fruitful way to work towards a better future.</p>
<p>But the appeal for national harmony makes us even more outraged at the whole system of lies, cowardice and oppression we see being used to create an artificial popular enthusiasm for the war.</p>
<p>The proletarian demonstrations organised by our Party were violently suppressed while the field was left open for the interventionists to rail and shout. Meanwhile the bourgeoisie had all the big daily newspapers to magnify the students’ rallies and conceal and slander the workers' protests, even intercepting our only daily newspaper with its news of socialist rallies. And we are supposed to accept the invitation to join in singing the praises for the war for freedom and democracy?</p>
<p>Are we supposed to show that we believe the official lies, based on rhetorical phrases, used to justify the intervention, when history shows us once again that the policy of the bourgeois states ­– and in particular the Italian State ­– is a tissue of hypocrisy and cynicism?</p>
<p>Salandra’s declarations have moved us no more than did the pronouncements of the Kaiser’s government at the time. At least they had the merit of being more sincere.</p>
<p>So Italy is taking to the field to defend the rights of the downtrodden? In that case you should have marched in August, when however you wanted to go to war on the Austro-German side. The Austrian ultimatum to Serbia was damaging Italian interests? But it was ten months later that you denounced the thirty year alliance. History will say that makes you accomplices of the German Empire.</p>
<p>Why didn’t the Austrian annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina awaken your protests? Maybe because you in your turn were engaged in Libyan banditry?[8] Instead you wait to have a humiliated and weakened enemy in front of you before giving breath to the wind of rhetoric. And beyond the eastern border where there was non-Italian land, both in terms of language and race, the monarchy and the Italian State calculated the profit and loss and revealed their equal greed for territorial expansion, as with Valona[9] and the Dodecanese islands, which were ceded to non-belligerent nations.</p>
<p>It is not the principle of nationality you should be invoking, but the rule of might is right. Rather than referring to Garibaldi you should be recalling Ninco Nanco.[10]</p>
<p>But you can carry on peddling your pack of lies! We will never be your accomplices!</p>
<p><strong>The <em>Fait Accompli</em></strong></p>
<p>From <em>Avanti</em> 23.5.1915</p>
<p>It was inevitable. In the tragic unfolding of history which has taken us from neutrality to war, the pretext justifying the turn round has already been concocted. After doing everything they could to avoid war, the duty of socialists is now to <em>"accept the fait accompli"</em> and agree to rally alongside all the national parties for the victory of Italian weaponry!</p>
<p><strong>Everyone is doing his duty</strong></p>
<p>Let's start by saying that those ­– we hope they will remain a very few – who have now leapt in such a hurry to the other side, without even waiting for the real war to begin, are the lukewarm neutrals who have <strong>not</strong> done their duty and who have always nurtured a secret, but transparent, nostalgia for the convenient anti-socialist ideologies of the warmongers.</p>
<p>And for now we leave aside names and facts. Instead, let’s discuss this ambiguous and hypocritical line of reasoning about accomplished fact which, if accepted, would dishonour the Socialist Party and would put us in the position of having to recognise as just and deserved all the statements of Mussolini and his comrades about our irresponsibility and our cowardice.</p>
<p>After witnessing, along with the willingness of the bourgeois world, the astonishing subjugation of the socialists in the leading states of Europe to the cause of the war, the Italian Socialist Party proclaimed that the International was not yet dead, and it was against Italy’s intervention in the conflict on the side of either group of belligerents.</p>
<p>It was said that we were spreading propaganda of cowardice, inertia, absenting ourselves from the decisive historical tragedy. We were denounced as accomplices of the Catholics, supporters of Austria, and lately of Giolitti and von Bülow. We answered our critics, who were more or less kept going by the Consulates of the Entente, that the war had not destroyed socialism, but rather confirmed the need for its own historic action to follow by way of the class struggle, rather than wiping it out it and erasing its very meaning by patriotic solidarity with the State and the bourgeoisie.</p>
<p>We said that our campaign for neutrality was motivated by reasons of principle and class interests which differed significantly from bourgeois neutrality and its murky background. Many of us – young people admittedly – who fought against the arguments for intervention perhaps erred in giving first place to contingent and national considerations which, purely accidentally could be shared by our enemies; but all of us proclaimed that our Party, through its anti-war propaganda, and by defending its class independence from all bribery and enticement, and from every attack, aimed at the high historical task of redeeming the dignity of socialism and preparing the ground for the new proletarian International, a task much bigger – and more real – than those who acted in the shadow of the national flag and in league with the sad Pharisees of trade-off patriotism.</p>
<p>So, has our clear and secure course of action perhaps been broken today <em>in limine belli</em> [Lat. on the outbreak of war], on the threshold of bourgeois war? No. For us, national reasons – the bourgeois motivations for neutrality – were secondary. The fact is that they fall on deaf ears, because the die is cast and the only concern remaining for the Italian state is an Italian victory against the enemy, which in turn is threatening with arms. Now the dangerous trap into which those socialists who proclaimed an indisputable duty to defend the homeland have fallen is vividly clear. Isn’t Italy today, despite having taken the initiative in a war that was not inevitable, in a position of national defence? Undoubtedly yes: from the moment its leaders threw her into the fire from which they now invite us to drag her out. But we vigorously separate ourselves from responsibility for the insane militarist policy. It would be illogical and stupid to make ourselves prisoners of the aims of our eternal enemies; to make use of the privileges we have always fought against and despise the opinion of the working classes we represent.</p>
<p>It really would be absurd to surrender to the crime that has been committed even as we object to the cold premeditation of the decision. It would turn us into accomplices in carrying it out, and would mean admitting that we are in solidarity with all the wars of the bourgeoisie after a period of Platonic propaganda for peace. It would mean the war cries of the bourgeoisie had made us ape the blatant patriotic somersault of those who opposed the war for the most reprehensible reasons only to rejoice now that it has been proclaimed.</p>
<p>Even the socialists of other countries – those we have been criticising and condemning for so long – separated their responsibilities and did their duty ... until the war. And if we know nothing more than them, having had time to study the causes that led them into error, we'll be covered in ridicule and ignominy.</p>
<p>We cannot avoid the war. We should therefore endure it and link up with its supporters! So say those who see the war as involving a coincidence of interests of all social classes. Admittedly there is an unavoidable coincidence in avoiding the worst defeat; but is there, under the banner of a truce between parties, an equal distribution of sacrifices and ultimate benefits?</p>
<p>NEVER. The struggle of the bourgeoisie against the proletariat not only is not suspended, but intensifies and reaches new heights, as economic exploitation continues and culminates with workers being told to sacrifice their blood in the name of their country. Meanwhile, however, the capitalists do not sacrifice the fruit of their own speculations. They call for an end to civil strife, demanding that workers give up defending themselves against a system of oppression which its beneficiaries are loath to constrain. And how can anyone who sees the justice of the proletariat protesting against poverty and hunger dare to stifle his indignation when the worker’s life is at stake? It is an attack that we could not prevent, just as we cannot prevent capitalist exploitation until the proletariat is stronger.</p>
<p>But all this does not make us desist from our unshakeable aversion to the present world and the sad reality which allows the existence of economic servitude and the most infamous military servitude to the detriment of the vast majority of men.</p>
<p>Those who today see nothing but the common denominator of patriotism, and therefore silence their opposition, are the losers. It would be better for them if they passed over to honestly professed interventionism. Yielding as they do today, under the impetus of the tide of war, they show the uncertainty and inconsistency of their thinking and the elasticity of their conscience.</p>
<p>Today <em>neutralism</em>, this unfortunate word, which has brought us so many calumnies, is dead. And it’s just as well because it's time to expose the injustice of the defamations we underwent. Today, magnificently alone against the entire bourgeoisie of each party, we can and must show that anti-militarism and internationalism are not empty concepts and are not a screen for lily-livered pusillanimity.</p>
<p>Now we have to stand firm against the moral pressure of sentimentality and charm, against the material pressure of fierce persecution. Today we must show that our aspirations for the International were right, despite its supposed defeat, and that our neutrality was not devoid of historical sense as the warmongers contend. If socialist work had been suspended before the war had broken out all previous work would also have been devalued, putting it in a most dubious and dishonourable light ...</p>
<p>Once again, oh intrepid servants of the <em>fait accompli</em>, who would like us to lick the hand that has floored but not broken us, the two opposing ways are drawn clearly and precisely.</p>
<p>Either outside or inside preconceived national and patriotic scruples. Either towards a pseudo-nationalist socialism or towards a new International.</p>
<p>Now that the war is a <em>'fait accompli'</em> the position of those whose opposition to the war did not hide a miserable duplicity can only be: against the war, for anti-militarism and international socialism!</p>
<p>[1] Nobody knows the exact number of deaths and casualties and no two lists of figures agree exactly. The closest match appears to be the figure provided by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission which listed 887,711 war dead for the UK and Colonies in 2014. However, this figure does not include all the known military fatalities from the British Empire. If it did there would have had to be around 908,000 poppies. On the other hand, British military deaths alone, excluding the empire and colonies, are reckoned to be around 658,700. See, for example, <em>Military Casualties of World War One</em> at <em>www.firstworldwar.com; History Learning Site, First World War Casualties; WW1 Casualty and Death Tables compiled by PBS (website).</em> Also, Wikipedia’s very detailed lists at: _<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=World_War_I_casualties&amp;oldid=656279538_">en.wikipedia.org</a></p>
<p>[2] Apart from <em>“national commemorative events to mark anniversaries of significant dates, such as the start of WW1 in 2014, the first day of the Battle of the Somme (2016) and Armistice Day (2018)”</em>, the initial allocation of state funds includes:</p>
<p><em>£35 million refurbishment of the WW1 galleries at IWM London .. A £5.3 million education programme, which will allow pupils and teachers from every maintained secondary school in England the chance to go on a tour of the great battlefields.</em></p>
<p><em>At least £15 million from the Heritage Lottery Fund, including a new £6 million community projects fund to enable young people working in their communities to conserve, explore and share local heritage of the First World War.</em></p>
<p><em>A grant of up to £1million from the National Heritage Memorial Fund to support HMS Caroline, the last surviving warship from the First World War fleet</em>.</p>
<blockquote class="remark"><p><a href="http://old.culture.gov.uk/what_we_do/honours/9478.aspx">old.culture.gov.uk</a></p>
</blockquote>
<p>[3] According to <a href="http://spartacus-educational.com/FWWgallipoli.htm">spartacus-educational.com</a>, “480,000 Allied troops took part in the Gallipoli campaign. The British had 205,000 casualties (43,000 killed). There were more than 33,600 ANZAC losses (over one-third killed) and 47,000 French casualties (5,000 killed). Turkish casualties are estimated at 250,000 (65,000 killed).” The word ‘casualties’ is the camouflage – it usually means death other than in direct military action but can also include those seriously wounded as to be out of action. It is estimated that disease was responsible for well over 60 per cent of deaths on the Gallipoli peninsula.</p>
<p>[4] Article 2 of <em>The Decree Abolishing the Feudal System, France August 11, 1789.</em></p>
<p>[5] Austria, which had fought to prevent Italian unification and which still claimed sovereignty over largely Italian-speaking areas of the Tyrol and Trieste, was regarded as the traditional enemy.</p>
<p>[6] The details of this were not made public until 1917 when the Bolsheviks revealed to the world the details of the real war aims of the competing powers. As well as promising Italy control over territory on its border with Austria-Hungary stretching from Trentino through the South Tyrol to Trieste the Treaty of London promised parts of Dalmatia and numerous islands along Austria-Hungary's Adriatic coast; the Albanian port city of Vlore (Italian: Valona) alongside a central protectorate in Albania; as well as more territory from the Ottoman Empire.</p>
<p>[7] From Part One of <em>La Seconda Internazionale e La Guerra</em> on the ICT website_._</p>
<p>[8] The Bosnian crisis of 1908–09, one of the squabbles between the Great Powers prior to the first world war. Sparked off when Austria-Hungary unilaterally announced the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina from the crumbling Ottoman Empire, the dispute was patched up in April 1909 by an amendment to the Treaty of Berlin reflecting the fait accompli and drawing this particular crisis to an end. The allusion to Libyan banditry is a reminder of Italian diplomats’ consistent efforts to secure agreement by all the major powers to Italy’s ‘right’ to control Libya well before the Italo-Turkish War of 1911 to 1912 when Italy duly seized the colonies of Cyrenaica and Tripolitania from the Ottoman Empire. In 1909 the agreement of Russia, was the last of the great powers to be secured.</p>
<p>[9] The Italian version of Vlorë where Albania declared independence from the Ottoman Empire on November 28, 1912, during the First Balkan War. The city became Albania's first capital following independence, but was brought under Italian occupation almost exactly two years later (29 November 1914) when the Bay of Vlorë was invaded by an Italian naval force under the pretext of protecting Albanian territories from Greek invasion.</p>
<p>[10] Ninco Nanco: a brigand leader in nineteenth century Basilicata, southern Italy. Renowned for his brutality and violence but often romanticised in popular imagination and song as a sort of good-hearted outlaw.</p>
</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-authored field-type-datetime field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><span class="date-display-single">Saturday, May 23, 2015</span></div></div></div><div class="field-group-format group_tags field-group-div group-tags speed-fast effect-none"><div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-5 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/es/publications/revolutionary-perspectives">Revolutionary Perspectives</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-8 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/es/articles/imperialism">Imperialism</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-9 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/es/articles/conflicts">Conflicts</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-10 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/es/articles/1914-18-world-war-i">1914-18: World War I</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-6 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/es/articles/amadeo-bordiga">Amadeo Bordiga</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-4 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/es/articles/balkans">Balkans</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/es/articles/italy">Italy</a></div></div></div></div>Sat, 23 May 2015 19:11:49 +0000Cleishbotham27215 at http://www.leftcom.orghttp://www.leftcom.org/es/node/27215#commentsThe Armenian Genocide 1915http://www.leftcom.org/es/node/26690
<div class="field field-name-field-images field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="http://www.leftcom.org/files/armenain%20masacre%202.jpg"><img src="http://www.leftcom.org/files/styles/galleryformatter_slide/public/armenain%20masacre%202.jpg?itok=o9xfHgmw" width="469" height="312" /></a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>
The following article is translated from <em>Sozialismus oder Barbarei</em>, the publication of our German sister group, the Gruppe Internationaler Sozialistinnen in 2010 and was published in <em>Revolutionary Perpectives 54</em> (Series 3). For some technical reasons we did not put it up on our site then but we are making amends for that omission on this 100 year anniversary of the event. Genocide, and so-called ethnic cleansing etc., is part of the history of capitalist imperialism. The Armenian Massacres are not only officially denied by the modern Turkish state but as we have seen in the last few days all talk of a geneocide is forbidden. The more they have to hide the more we have to denounce. Our comrades however, following the steps of Karl Liebknecht, were not content merely with telling a story of Turkish brutality but also of exposing the role of the supposedly civilised German state. There is not a single modern state which can escape the same accusation. This is in the best traditions of revolutionary defeatism and we thus support it and give it a wider airing.</p>
<p>CWO April 2015</p>
<p><strong>The Genocide against the Armenians and German Participation</strong></p>
<p>“Who talks about the extermination of the Armenians today?”, Hitler asked a few days before the German attack on Poland, in a speech where, amongst other things, he made clear the harsh conduct to be adopted by the SS Death’s Head gangs against the civilian population. A notable quote which shows that, even then, the genocide against the Armenians was widely known, and also served fanatical nationalists, like Hitler, as an example to be followed. Nevertheless, the events of 95 years ago are sometimes denied, or, at least, discussed as if they were extremely controversial. The historical facts on this topic have been and are still denied, the history books remain falsified and whoever, as a journalist, for example, even merely mentions the genocide, is exposed to severe repression. Very often, even this does not happen, as the liberal press daily reinforces the denial of history.</p>
<p>In Germany on the other hand, it is not so much the genocide against the Armenians that is denied, but the most widespread silence over the role of the Germany military is observed — for good reasons, as we shall see. In general, the dominant tendency here is to shrug off the Armenian genocide, like the Holocaust, as a regrettable historical episode.</p>
<p>The most popular basis for this evasion of the facts was delivered by Stephane Courtois in his consciously “random” ordering of human suffering in the introduction to his “The Black Book of Communism”:</p>
<p><em>“The Ottoman Empire allowed itself to be swept into the genocide of the Armenians, and Germany to that against the Jews, Roma and Sinti. Mussolini’s Italy massacred the Ethiopians. The Czechs find it difficult to admit that their behaviour towards the Sudeten Germans in the years 1945-6 was not above all suspicion…”.</em></p>
<p>Instead of clarifying the connection between the massacres of the Jews and the Armenians or even mentioning the German participation in the latter, in this manner, at best, the putting of all “human catastrophes” onto the same level can be further propagated.</p>
<p><strong>Germany and the Genocide of 1915</strong></p>
<p>In January 1916, according to an enquiry by Karl Liebknecht addressed to the German Reichstag,</p>
<p><em>in our ally, the Turkish Empire, the Armenian population in hundreds of thousands have been driven out of their houses and butchered,</em></p>
<p>and he asked about the consequences.</p>
<p>The reply of the leader of the Political Department of the Foreign Ministry and Delegate of the Kaiser, Dr. von Stumm:</p>
<p><em>The Reich Chancellery is aware that the seditious activities of our enemies have caused the Turkish court to resettle the Armenian population of certain areas of the Turkish Empire and to send them to new living quarters. Because of certain repercussions of these measures, there has been an exchange of views between the German and Turkish governments. Further details cannot be communicated.</em></p>
<p>In World War I, Germany and Turkey were allies. At the time of the genocide many Germans were staying in Turkey and were eye-witnesses or heard comments. Some also became perpetrators. Here, we only give here a few examples. The deportation plans for the Armenians originated with Colmar Freiherr von der Goltz, who had been working since 1883 as a military trainer and organiser in the Turkish Empire, where he was addressed as a Turkish Field Marshall exclusively as “Golz-Pasha”.The German commentator Paul Rohrbach proposed a deportation of the Armenians as early as 1913 to solve the “Armenian question”.</p>
<p>In 1913, about 800 German officers under General Liman came to Istanbul, in order to militarily prepare their future alliance partner. A few of these officers took part in the planning and execution of the deportations.</p>
<p>The German General Fritz Bronsart von Schellendorf, the Chief of the General Staff of the Ottoman army justified his criminal actions against the Armenians even after the war and wrote in 1919:</p>
<p><em>The Armenian is like the Jew, a parasite when outside his homeland, who sucks up the health of other country in which he settles. Thence comes the hate which was discharged in a mediaeval fashion against them as an undesirable people and which led to their murder</em>. [1]</p>
<p><strong>The Young Turks</strong></p>
<p>The Young Turk Revolution of 1908 led to the dismissal of Abdul Hamid II and severely restricted the rights of the Sultanate, without abolishing it in principle. Under Abdul Hamid, the Armenian population suffered extremely harsh pogroms. Between 1894 and 1896 thousands of Armenians were murdered in these. At this time, the Ottoman Empire consisted extensively of peasants and a huge army of soldiers. The proletariat was extremely small, but the Revolution brought about their first significant strikes. The “Revolution”, however, was mainly carried out by groups of officers. The “Committee for Unity and Progress” (ITC — <em>Itihat ve Terakki Cemiyet</em>), founded in the 1890s, was politically involved in it. The Young Turks’ dissatisfaction with, and opposition to, Abdul Hamid primarily fed upon military defeats and loss of territory, mainly in the Balkans but also <em>vis-à-vis</em> Russia. The Ottoman Empire had declared state bankruptcy as early as 1875. The Russian-Turkish War of 1877-8 led to territorial losses in Armenia and the Balkans. With the decay of the Empire and the economic collapse, Turkey’s dependence on foreign support grew, above all in respect to Germany. In January, the ITC prevailed over other opposition parties and in the wake of a heavy defeat in the Balkan War, seized exclusive power through a coup. Talaat became Minister of the Interior, Enver, Minister of War and Kemal, Navy Minister. These three constituted a triumvirate and remained at the head of the state until 1918. Turkey’s entry into the World War on the side of Germany and Austria-Hungary was practically provoked by the triumvirate, as the basis for their domination over the population, which was already thin, and further eroded in the wake of famine. The Christian population of the Ottoman Empire in any case could expect nothing but persecution and massacres. Their early hopes in the Young Turk Revolution were rapidly shattered with the pogroms which had been raging long before 1915. Inside the ITC, Pan-Turkism prevailed more and more against traditional Ottomanism, which regarded Islam as the ruling religion in the Ottoman Empire, while other religions were exposed to repressive laws like, for example, an exceptional tax. Non-Moslems, up until just before the 1915 genocide, were not allowed to enter military service and were excluded from related key positions in the state apparatus. Thus, they remained isolated to a great extent, and, insofar as they had not armed and organised themselves for self-defence, they were exposed to pogroms without any protection.</p>
<p>Pan-Turkism differed from Ottomanism in that it merged the hegemony of Islam with the nation. The evil of all the misery and defeats should be sought in the Christians, in the Greeks, the Armenians and the Aramaeans. “Turkdom” should be perpetuated across the world. Enver expressed himself in 1915 to the chairman of the German mission to the East, Dr. Lepsius: “</p>
<p><em>Consider that the Turkish people numbers 40 million. If they were constituted into an empire, then they would have the same importance in Asia as Germany does in Europe.</em> [2]</p>
<p>At that time, about 9 million Turks lived in the Ottoman Empire. In order to constitute this empire, the Armenians needed to be “stamped out”, as they represented a strategic obstacle to this nationalist project for expansion. It is true that pogroms against Christians in the Ottoman Empire were not rare, but in 1915 everything that had gone before was exceeded: even in 1914, starting in Western Anatolia, pogroms mainly against Greeks were perpetrated, which were largely carried out by the <em>Teskalit-i Mahsura</em> special units, supported by the Ministry of War. By 1916, about 500,000 people were murdered in this area alone, and thousands of others driven away. The “success” in Western Anatolia now encouraged the ruling class’s murderers to commit genocide against the Armenians too. Entry into the World War meant that people could be killed “in peace”. At last, no deference needed to be paid to anyone, and everyone could be depicted as a victim of war. First, on 25 February 1915, Enver Pasha ordered Armenian soldiers to disarm, and they were organised into work-battalions. Many died in these work-battalions, or were shot by the dozen. On 24 April, 600 Armenian intellectuals were deported from Istanbul and killed. Now the real “deportation” could begin. First, in the main, the men were led off from the localities, and then the women and children. As a rule, nothing could be taken with them. They were merged into long treks and sent on a long march, at whose end death almost always awaited them. Turks, Kurds and Circassians who encountered these treks, attacked them, raping and killing. Others tried to help, and were executed. The treks ended in the Syrian or Iraqi deserts where illness, hunger and thirst killed off the people.</p>
<p><em>At the Kemach gorge, near Erzurum City, where the river Euphrates cuts into the mountain terrain, people were tied into groups of five and thrown down. In spring the meltwater carried the corpses onto the plain, where they became the booty of the miserable and always hungry village curs. In Trabzent (Trabzon), they only deported some of the Armenians. They drowned the rest, together with some Greeks. They were loaded onto boats and these were dragged out to sea. There the boats were simply sunk. Land, animals, houses, shops and all the goods left behind were transferred to the ownership of their Islamic neighbours and the officials.</em> [3]</p>
<p>The number of victims of the genocide was possibly 1.5 or perhaps even 2 million people. Most of the murderers walked free after the trials in Istanbul immediately after the World War. The trials were held after “pressure” by the British. Even in this connection, Germany thoroughly distinguished itself by sheltering wanted murderers. For example, Talaat Pasha, who was living in Berlin in 1921 as a respected citizen. Later he was shot by the Armenian student Salomon Teilirian, whose family had been victims of the genocide.</p>
<p><strong>Kemalist Myths and Imperialist Interests</strong></p>
<p>But the Entente Powers also had no real interest in bringing the genocide to light. The British imperialists were only concerned with breaking off as much as was possible of the cake of the collapsing Ottoman Empire for themselves. For this they needed justification. It was similar with the other imperialist states. Their imperialist interests released the Turkish rulers from the burden of the genocide. At the latest, after the declaration of the Turkish Republic in 1923, there was no more talk of genocide. The victorious powers were more interested in a strong Turkey as a “bulwark against communism”. Nevertheless, the “liberation struggle” under Ataturk’s leadership against the occupation powers after the World War depended to a significant extent on the very <em>Teskilat-i Mahusa</em> units, whose organisation of the genocide was decisive. Ataturk himself took care of their release from prison (insofar as they were taken into custody at all), and many, who had taken over Armenian property were anxious that survivors could return. Hence, they supported Ataturk and the “liberation struggle” all the more vehemently. The Turkish ruling class reacts with extreme sensitivity to accusations in connection with the genocide, as its domination rests precisely on the myth of the “liberation struggle”. Addressing the genocide means questioning Ataturk and his Republic, which rests on the expulsion or annihilation of other peoples, and combatting Kemalism, which is dominant in broad swathes of the Turkish Left. As mentioned, Turkish historiography knows no genocide against the Armenians. The overwhelming majority of Turkish authors and commentators have developed various “lines of argument”. A popular argument goes along these lines: it was war and therefore there were deaths on both sides. Others claim that the Armenians were deported because the collaborated with the Russians in World War I. Yet others calculate how many Turks gave their life on the various fronts and compare the figures. The most widespread legend makes the victims the perpetrators. Even the debate on the diplomatic level over the Armenian genocide which has emerged in recent years is less about clarification but about winning political positions between competing national states. In this cynical power game the representatives of the ruling classes try to interpret and exploit the events of 95 years ago in the sense of their own imperialist interests. The Armenian genocide was the result of a nationalist drive to expand which is typical of the age of imperialism. Only when the rule of imperialism is broken worldwide and the dictatorship of capital is finally lifted, will the victims of this mass murder see justice done to them.</p>
<p><strong>Notes</strong></p>
<p>1 Alsan, F., Bozay K. u.a.: Die Grauen Wölfe heulen wieder [The Grey Wolves Still Howl], Münster 1997, p30</p>
<p>2 Seidel-Pielen, Eberhard: Unsere Türken [Our Turks], Berlin 1995, p51</p>
<p>3 Aslan, F., Bozay K. u.a.: Die Grauen Wölfe heulen wieder, Münster 1997, p32</p>
</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-authored field-type-datetime field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><span class="date-display-single">Tuesday, April 28, 2015</span></div></div></div><div class="field-group-format group_tags field-group-div group-tags speed-fast effect-none"><div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-5 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/es/publications/texts">Texts</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-8 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/es/articles/imperialism">Imperialism</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-9 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/es/articles/discriminations">Discriminations</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-10 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/es/articles/1914-18-world-war-i">1914-18: World War I</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-4 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/es/articles/caucasus-and-anatolia">Caucasus and Anatolia</a></div></div></div></div>Tue, 28 Apr 2015 11:32:25 +0000Cleishbotham26690 at http://www.leftcom.orghttp://www.leftcom.org/es/node/26690#comments